Box Number

6

Folder

1

Item Description

Letter, November 17, 1864, T. W. Brevard, ''Camp Near Petersburg, Va'' to ''My Dear Father,'' 4 pp. (last leaf missing): ''I wish very much that Mary and the children could be with you until the end of the war; and I do not know how it can be better arranged than by your returning to Florida and taking charge of the plantation. . . Mary is as much devoted to both yourself and Mother as if she were your own child. . . I hope that my dear Mother will abandon the idea of teaching school. It will scarcely pay enough . . . and it would be too confining . . . I agree entirely with you in your purpose to prevent Robert from entering service until the law claims him as a soldier. God knows the law is sufficiently severe, and will take him soon enough. . . let him join cavalry in Florida . . . do not let him join infantry . . . Why not make an effort to get him into the Virginia Military Institute, in which case he would not be liable to conscription, and would upon his graduation, be entitled to a commission. . . The re-election of Lincoln gives us the certainty of four more years of war . . . and we have no choice but to fight for it to the bitter end. . . The army is nothing like equal to the same army in 1862 - but this is much attributable to the want of the thorough discipline, and the lack of the completeness of organization which existed in the earlier part of the war, and before the regiments had been reduced to as low a standard as to have lost the esprit de corps of former days. . .''

Box Description

BREVARD FAMILY PAPERS

Folder Description

Correspondence and Papers, 1820-1864