“I thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along th’unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow thought — and with that word alone, you can feel the weight of his grief bending the pen in his hand. Thoughts born out of sorrow are rarely steady. They waver. They darken. They deceive.And he felt — deeply.

And he felt — deeply.

Too deeply, perhaps.

A man who had buried his wife in flames.

A man who had nearly lost his son to war.

A man watching his nation bleed itself dry.

His emotions were a storm, and his thoughts were the debris caught within it.

In that fragile moment, when he scribbled these lines, you almost sense a bitterness rising — a near accusation toward heaven itself. A sense that the promised “peace on earth” had been shattered beyond repair. Almost as if God were distant. Almost as if He were silent. Almost as if…

He were dead.

But emotions lie.

Grief lies.

War lies.

And Longfellow was standing in the middle of all three.

War Does Not Sing — It Screams.

It is easy for us in the modern world to romanticize the Civil War.

To imagine tidy reenactments, soldier uniforms pressed clean, flags waving in a breeze.

But the reality?

Mud. Blood. Smoke.

Limbs in piles.

Boys screaming for their mothers as life left their bodies.

Fathers slumped face-down in fields miles from home.

More than 620,000 Americans died — many without graves, many without names.

Homes destroyed.

Families scattered.

Children orphaned before they could speak a word.

General William Tecumseh Sherman said it plainly:

“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it.”

Longfellow lived in that cruelty.

He breathed it, grieved it, wrote from it.

His thoughts were shaped by trauma — and he wasn’t alone.

Your Own Family’s Wound

And for many of us, that trauma still echoes through our bloodlines.

In my own family research, I discovered something chilling.

My husband’s great-grandfather grew up largely an orphan. His father died before he was even born — killed in an earlier Mexican war. And his mother?

His sisters?

Kidnapped.

Taken by Sherman’s forces.

Shipped North.

Forced to marry Union men.

Not by choice.

Not by love.

But by force.

This was not ancient history.

This was America.

This was the reality of war — the kind of reality this modern generation cannot fathom.

To the Present Generation: You Don’t Want This.

Today, I watch crowds of angry young people — fueled by politics, media, and emotion — chanting for civil unrest.

Demanding upheaval.

Threatening rebellion.

Dreaming of war as if it were some thrilling revolution.

But let me say this with every bit of righteous fire I have:

You do NOT want a civil war.

You do NOT want the bloodshed.

You do NOT understand the price.

This foolish generation needs to sit down.

Shut up.

And learn from the lessons purchased in blood.

Because if they don’t — history will repeat itself.

And God help us all if it does.

Scripture Speaks to the Mind Deceived by Emotion

The Bible warns us plainly:

“The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately wicked;

who can know it?”

— Jeremiah 17:9

Emotions are not truth.

They are not God.

They are not reliable guides.

Proverbs reminds us:

“There is a way that seems right to a man,

but its end is the way of death.”

— Proverbs 14:12

And Christ Himself said:

“Blessed are the peacemakers:

for they shall be called the children of God.”

— Matthew 5:9

Longfellow felt despair.

He thought peace was dead.

But peace was not dead.

God was not dead.

Hope was not dead.

The bells still rang.

And they still ring today — if we would only listen.

Final Reflection

War wrecked Longfellow’s world.

It shattered families — including my own husband’s.

It wounded generations.

It carved scars into this nation that we still trace today.

And yet…

This generation toys with the idea of repeating that nightmare.

My prayer is simple:

May these reflections shake us awake. May they teach us gratitude. May they lead us away from division and back toward peace.

War is not glory.

War is not cleansing.

War is not the answer.

Be thankful — deeply, humbly thankful — that we are not living in that nightmare today.

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