I'm growing weary marching on this road to Chancellorsville. It's hard not knowing what awaits as I top the next hill. Your picture in a locket, I keep next to my heart. It helps me not to feel alone while we are apart. I do not know what will come from this awful war, but I believe in the causes that we're fighting for. I think of you both day and night, I pray God keeps me strong. And when this war has ended, I'll find my way back home.
Today has left me hungry, depleted of supplies. Although my body's breaking down, I'm thankful I'm alive. I lay here empty, shivering, my body filled with pain. I cannot wait until the day I see your face again. Many now have fallen, but I must persevere, as when this war is ended, I'm coming home my dear. Until that day's upon us and you are in my sight, I hold to our undying love to see me through the nights. Please know my dear I love you whatever fate may hold. You're always in my heart and forever in my soul.
Leaving the War Behind
for Elihu Burritt, peacemaker
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
- H. W. Longfellow, “Christmas Bells”
1863, your old friend Longfellow almost
despairing. What a year! The Union
torn. Chancellorsville. War’s ravenous mouth.
And then came Vicksburg, Gettysburg.
The whole land lay in a bloody drouth,
the cannon thundered in the South,
and Elihu, you sailed away. For years
you let the ink flow like a sea
to float the cause of Peace. Yet you found
no peace at home. Was it a personal
surrender, to be England-bound?
And with the sound
of waves and seabirds, did you leave
behind the burden of a homeland
north to south a battleground?
Could a foreign landscape comfort
you? Or did war images confound –
the carols drowned
in military march-time in your head?
As summer waned, the loss of Chickamauga.
Brother killing brother in a marshy fen.
Elihu, did you never quite give up
the distant hope – oh where, and when? –
of peace on earth, good-will to men?
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