"...Five men...belonging to our Division...had to stay behind and a party of Rebels took them and tied their legs at the limbs of the trees with their heads hanging downwards with their throat cut off..."

Autograph letter signed by Adam Scholl Brey (1833-1916), Co. H, 3rd Pennsylvania Reserves (32nd Pennsylvania Infantry) to his brother. Camp near Fredericksburg, Virginia, 28 June 1862. 4 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on illustrated "General Wool" letterhead. 

Brey, a bricklayer from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, was described as having grey eyes and black hair at the time of his enlistment, June 18, 1861. In the spring of 1862, the 32nd Pennsylvania Infantry was assigned to the Department of the Rappahannock. Penned during this time, Brey's letter details several unsettling Confederate atrocities against Union soldiers.

First, he tells of a fellow Union solider who was wounded and "lying nearby a well." Thirsty, he asked a passing Confederate for a drink of water, and the Confederate, Brey reports, "has the cup of water [in one hand] and in the other hand a revolver [with] which he shot him, instantly dead."

Later, on the march to Falmouth, Brey graphically recounts another instance of Confederate brutality: "Five men...belonging to our Division...had to stay behind and a party of Rebels took them and tied their legs at the limbs of the trees with their heads hanging downwards with their throat cut off. That is the way our cavalry found them when they went out scouting."

These were among the first of undoubtedly countless violent deaths and gruesome injuries Brey witnessed during his service, given the major conflicts his regiment participated in following its assignment to the Army of the Potomac later in June: Gaines' Mill, Charles City Cross Roads, 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. 

Despite the heavy casualties his regiment sustained, Brey survived the war and was only briefly hospitalized In September of 1862 at Bedloe's Island in New York. He was discharged on July 28, 1864 after three years of service. 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]