Give my love to all at home, your
affectionate Son Charles Bruce, Jr.

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P.S. Enclosed I send you a letter one of our men found in the enemy’s camp sealed & ready to be mailed the morning of the battle.

Camp of 14th Va. Reg., June 22, 1862

Dear Father,

We are doing nothing today but lying in our tents waiting for something to turn up. There was some heavy skirmishing on the lines last night after midnight. There was quite an unfortunate occurance during the fight. One of our regiments coming up to reinforce the pickets met another one coming out of the woods & mistaking them for yankees fired into them & killed 5 men & wounded some 20 or 30. I think something ought to be done to put an end to this picket-firing. It is of no use and besides being very disagreeable it is no use to either side. One day we drove in the enemy’s pickets & the next day perhaps he drives us back to our former position. The other day when I was on picket they sent us word to advance on the enemy. We were ordered to advance till a signal was passed from the right for us to halt. My company being the left company was seperated from this regiment by a pond with thick bushes around it so that I could not see any signals at all. I continued to advance with my company however until I got to the edge of an old field in which there was a battery with a regiment of infantry to support it. As soon as some of my men appeared on the edge of the field they were fired upon but fortunately they dodged behind some large pines that were near at hand. As I was not ambitious of distinguishing myself by storming a battery with a single company. I halted & sent back word that I was about as far as circumstances would permit me to go at that time. The enemy continued to fire on us for 15 or 20 minutes but without doing us any injury as we were all lying down behind the biggest pine trees we could find.

It is reported throughout camp that we are going to attack [Maj. Gen. George B.] McClellan in his entrenchments in a few days, but with what truth I do not know. If we do you may look out for the bloodiest battle that we have had yet. I expect that we will have to do it sometime for McClellan has not advanced his pickets a hundred yards in three weeks.

They say that the mortality amongst the sick & wounded in Richmond is terrible, amounting I understand to a hundred a day.

I hear it stated also that McClellan’s army is less by 68 thousand than when he left Yorktown.

I should like very much to pay you a visit at home now but I suppose that is impossible for a long time as yet, for I can not even get a pass to go to Richmond for a few hours to look up my sick men. I am better than when I last wrote but am still far from well.

Give my love to all at home.
I am Dear Father you affectionate
Son, Charles Bruce, Jr.

Captain Charles Bruce was killed on Tuesday, July 1, 1862, at 5 p.m. at Malvern Hill. The entry in James Coles Bruce’s Bible says, “Alas for thee my dearest, dearest son.”

Malvern Hill was the last of the famous Seven Days’ Battles on the Virginia Peninsula–a battle that Confederate General Robert E. Lee expected to win, despite the fact that Union troops occupied a nearly impregnable position. The 150-foot-high hill towered above the surrounding terrain and was protected on its flanks by deep ravines. Union gunners, with an open field of fire, slaughtered the atttacking Confederates in clusters, providing the war’s harshest example of the superiority of Northern artillery.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Daniel H. Hill said of the battle, “It was not war–it was murder.” At the conclusion of that one day of fighting, 5,355 Confederate troops had been lost.

Dr. P.S. Carrington, a local physician who attended the Bruce slaves and who lived with his family near Mount Laurel on land adjoining that of Clement Adkisson, wrote to James Coles Bruce on August 21, 1862, after Charles Bruce had been killed:

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