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Lincoln’s Letter to Mrs. Bixby
Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21,
1864.
Mrs. Bixby, Boston,
Massachusetts:
DEAR MADAM: I have been
shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the
Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons
who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and
fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the
Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage
the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory
of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln.
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For Families of Airmen, Sailors, and
Soldiers
Father, you know the reality of laying your Son
down on the altar of freedom. Send forth your Holy Spirit to comfort
those whose loved ones have passed from this world in the service of
freedom and country. These families are honored to sacrifice, but
they are bereaved. Let them feel our "thanks" in their
spirits, and sustain them until you make all wars cease to the ends
of the earth, and you bring your peaceable kingdom.
Amen.
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Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
A.E. Houseman
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when Earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
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