DECEMBER 25, 1863:
The third
Christmas of the war.
In the South, Mary Boykin Chesnut records a festive holiday feast in her
diary, but also remarks on the human toll of the war:
Christmas Day, 1863.
Yesterday dined with the Prestons. Wore one of
my handsomest Paris dresses (from Paris before the war). Three magnificent
Kentucky generals were present, with Senator Orr from South Carolina, and Mr.
Miles...Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs;
von Borcke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat...Poor fellows, they
laugh at wounds. "And they yet can show many a scar." We had for
dinner oyster soup, besides roast mutton, ham, boned turkey, wild duck,
partridge, plum pudding, sauterne, burgundy, sherry, and Madeira. There is life
in the old land yet!
In the North, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, coping with the death of his
beloved wife Fannie earlier in the year in a tragic domestic accident, and the
paralysis of his son, Charles, in the Mine Run Campaign, pens the classic poem,
“Christmas Bells”:
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,
good-will 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,
good-will to men!
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!
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!
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!”
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!”
