Book Description

"Among this select corpus of lasting [Civil War] sources Robert Goldthwaite Carter's Four Brothers in Blue ranks right at the top...alongside Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's The Passing of the Armies, Frank Haskell's The Battle of Gettysburg, and Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs."--historian Frank Vandiver, former president of Texas A&M University, the University of North Texas, and former acting president of Rice University. One of the most extraordinary chronicles by a family of soldiers in the American Civil War, Four Brothers in Blue draws upon the letters of the Carter brothers, who fought from beginning to end for the Union cause. At Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Overland Campaign, the boys reveal what life was really like for those in the Union blue. Suffering hunger, punishing extremes of cold and heat, the death of beloved comrades, illness, the horror and confusion of combat, they persevered through all four years of bloody fighting. Everything about these letters carry the ring of truth. The excitement but horror of battle, fear, the frustrations and humor of camp life, the exhaustion of endless marching, and the pain of family separation, all combine to bring the period to life. Educated and articulate, the Carter brothers shared their opinions on Lincoln, McClellan, Meade, Grant, and other prominent men. They discussed politics and battle tactics, kept up with the news in the papers, and did all they could to support each other when despair and loneliness overtook one or the other. A close family, the affectionate ties between them come through in their letters to each other and to their parents. The youngest son, Robert, was only sixteen when he enlisted, later described by a contemporary as "strong as a bull and as brave as a lion." He compiled this book in 1913. This edition contains information and annotations about the period and participants that appear in no previous editions. No study of the Civil War is complete without Four Brothers in Blue.