Winding Down: The Revolutionary War Letters of Lieutenant Benjamin Gilbert of Massachusetts, 1780-1783

120 pp. From his original manuscript letterbook in The William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan. His letters home and to comrades and friends, faithfully recorded for the last years (1780-83) of a long war, are a window into the mind and feelings of a young officer who willingly spent his youth at war, in a cause that often left him discouraged, exhausted, and generally depressed. ...Gilbert's letters tell the story of low morale, mutiny, even treason in the Continental Army, reciting a litany of complaint about the lack of popular support after the enthusiasm of 1775; but they also weave a more personal story through his account of public affairs.