Amos Brewster

Some lives are defined by risk-taking moments of decision. For Amos C. Brewster, two such moments — one public and one private — stake out the colorful outline of a quiet, dignified life. 

In taking up arms as an African American to fight with Union soldiers against the tyranny of Southern slavery, and, years later, in defying the social standards of the day by marrying much later in life than most of his contemporaries, Brewster demonstrated a peculiar, exemplary spirit: He was a man who broke free from the tiresome shackles of convention to follow what he knew in his heart to be right. 

Little is known of Brewster’s family origins, but that he was born into a humble Providence family in the early 1840s. Like many Northern blacks, his parents had separately won their independence and migrated north — and, like many blacks, many of his relations were still slaves on Southern plantations.

Brewster’s journey through the Civil War as a black soldier, including his service in the battles of Deep Bottom, Chaffin’s Farm and Fair Oaks, began on a chilly winter morning, when he joined the 29th Connecticut Regiment at the time of its organization on March 8, 1864, in Fair Haven, Conn. He left Rhode Island not by choice but because black regiments were selectively mustered during the Civil War — and Connecticut’s, as one of the largest and most prominent, promised a good chance of meaningful maneuvers and combat. 

The regiment mustered in Connecticut that day wasted no time before springing into action. Brewster and his unit were deployed just 12 days later, when they were given orders to march to Annapolis, Md. 

At that time, in the spring of 1864, the war had reached its final stage, with the Confederate surrender at Appomattox only a little more than a year away. All-black companies, first sanctioned in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, had grown to include more than 200,000 black soldiers and 7,000 white officers in 166 regiments — a force greater than the sum of the Confederate army by war’s end.

It was just six months into his term of service that Brewster experienced the most terrifying and defining moment of the war — and of his life.

At dawn on the morning of Sept. 29, 1864, near the end of a dark and foggy night, a company of Confederate soldiers attacked an enemy camp outside Richmond, Va. Brewster, already risen to the position of corporal, was among the soldiers in command of the Union side that morning.

The Union losses were heavy that day — the 8th Regiment from Pennsylvania alone lost over 300 men. But by mid-morning, the soldiers in the 29th Connecticut had driven back the Confederate company four miles.

Hours later, the Confederate troops were in full retreat. 

“They finally gave up after a while,” wrote Union Sergeant Joseph O. Cross, another African American soldier in the 29th Connecticut, in a letter he penned to his wife just five days later — a letter in which he did not attempt to mask his fear. “We all expected that it was our last time.”

Surviving letters like the one from Cross to his wife are among the most important surviving artifacts from the Civil War, a crucial resource for historians and Civil War buffs alike. They provide a glimpse into the Civil War experience of men like Brewster and Cross. But during the war, they served a much more direct purpose: the rare opportunity to pen a letter afforded soldiers the opportunity to confirm that they, and their friends, were still alive. 

“Tell Triphnia Brown that I have heard from William a few days ago,” Cross wrote to his wife, spreading news not only of his own good fortune to be alive, but also of those acquaintances whom his family knew well. “Joseph is well, (and) Amos C. Brewster is well.”

Cross’s brief account is the only surviving first-hand report of Brewster’s well-being during the nearly 19 months he fought in the all-black 29th Regiment’s Company I. He survived that skirmish on the morning of Oct. 4 — a close call that was neither his first nor his last.

Through the spring and summer of 1864, Brewster moved with his company through the south Atlantic coast, making stops in Beaufort, S.C. and various cities and small towns in Virginia. Though much of the 29th Regiment’s service during those first months was on garrison duty, the company’s late summer arrival in Petersburg, Va. began a new phase for Brewster and his fellow soldiers. The regiment’s service record over the next six months dispels any notion that all-black companies were mere latecomers, or served only as trench-digging laborers.

The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, which lasted from mid-summer into the spring of 1865, put Brewster and the 29th Connecticut under the command of the Union’s two leading commanders, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George Meade. On Aug. 13, 1864, the regiment joined siege operations against the city of Petersburg, a city fiercely defended by the Confederate forces. The 29th Connecticut, just four months after its organization, found itself in the middle of one of the most intense — and final — campaigns of the Civil War.

Not until the following March did Petersburg fall — and with it Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy. On April 3, 1865, the all-black 29th Regiment from Connecticut became the first Union infantry division to occupy Richmond. The Civil War was all but finished — and with it the institution of slavery.

While one chapter of Brewster’s life ended with the last volleys of Civil War gunshots, a second unique experience was to define the remainder of his life. A resident of Providence since his birth, Brewster had chosen not marry — either before the war or for many years after its end. Little is known about the 30 years that passed between his service in the 29th Connecticut and the next major, and unexpected event in his life.

A man who by all accounts had kept to the private, humble life of a bachelor for nearly 50 years, 

Brewster married Mary E. Mott on June 4, 1889. She too, was a quiet woman, a humble seamstress who was known for her caring warmth and her kindness toward children. 

Marriage records indicate the two met in the mid-1880s, when Mary traveled south to Providence, leaving behind her native Boston after the death of her mother and father within a single year of one another. At the age of thirty-five, she had never before been outside Boston, let alone Massachusetts. She came on the promise of work from a cousin, who had toiled as an odd-laborer and carpenter for white families and who had established a reputation among locals — black and white alike. 

It was to be a brilliant if brief flourish of happiness: Amos Brewster would live only 10 more years after his marriage, passing away in Providence in December, 1899. 

He was laid to rest in Grace Church Cemetery.