A Christmas Peace

"The sad effects ( of war) are felt in, alas! too many American homes, even at the present time - now! ( 1887) twenty years since the war! Twenty summers have shed their glowing warmth over the old battlefields! twenty autumns have shifted their melancholy smoke and sunshine above the sacred cemeteries! twenty winters, with their chilling snows and rains, have iced the tree boughs that droop over far away graves! twenty springs, with their cheering bird-calls, have spread their smiling floral covering, like Charity's peaceful mantle, over all the wide country where the campaigning was; and yet the heart strings then broken will remain unstrung until the soothing hand of death shall softly entwine them for all time."

Our warriors have been home from Iraq only a few days but will these poignant words from a writer after the Civil War still ring true twenty years hence? Who will pen such eloquence a score into the future. Will we still be a divided America?