All the World's a Stage - Even the Confederacy - for Brooklyn Soldiers Fighting in Civil War
On the back wall of Brooklyn Historical Society’s critically acclaimed Personal Correspondents exhibition, under the heading “Facing Death,” resides a grim and tragic quotation from the letters of James Beith, a private in the 48th regiment, New York Infantry. There is nothing thought of a poor soldier when he gets killed, only for to dig a hole and throw him into it, then sometimes hardly cover him with enough of dirt. The quotation is from a letter which Beith wrote to his brother in May of 1864, while his regiment marched north through the brutal and desperate final months of the Civil War…