Thread by @pptsapper

In the waning days of November and early December, 1863, the U.S. Army of the Potomac engaged in a series of abortive offensives in Virginia known as the Mine Run Campaign. It was inconclusive from the operational perspective and the armies went into winter camps

But the strategic or operational perspective never captures the individuals who die or are wounded - they are glossed over by fancy-sounding words, as I used earlier: "inconclusive," "abortive." The loss of families has no place in those words. But there were many losses.

Among them was a young lieutenant of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, one of the US cavalry units always in the thick of things. While on recon, he was shot in the back. His name was Charley Longfellow, son of the famed poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

He was lucky, he survived

One thinks of the famous father, now solely the worried parent, frantically travelling to the seat of war, searching field hospitals in Virginia for his son, not knowing what he will find. As so many did in that war, in every war. The plight of the parents. The unknown.

Henry was lucky. He found Charley alive. But the experience shook him. So on Christmas Day, 1863, he wrote his feelings, as only he knew how. The result was "Christmas Bells." We know it as it was set to music in 1872: "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"

And yet, none of us, probably, have heard it with all the verses. The verses of a man conscious of the devastating war leaving parents in mourning that Christmas of '63, with permanently empty chairs in homes across the nation. The pent-up sorrow. And so he tried to address it

The opening is familiar, of course, but knowing the feelings of his heart, they take on a new tone. Biting. Pained.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And then he strikes, with the reality of what was on his heart:

"Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

This verse is the plea of a father whose household was nearly made forlorn, and so he speaks for the hundreds of thousands:

"It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

You can literally feel the desperation in this verse. The cost of war.

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

But in the end, Longfellow channeled Lincoln's words from the month prior: "that these dead shall not have died in vain"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men"

This Christmas, so many in Ukraine must be feeling those emotions of loss, of anguish, of parents who have buried their children. The price of standing against evil. I can only echo Longfellow: "The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail."