Get your own Free Home PageA week before the battle of Bull Run, Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the Second Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote home to his wife in Smithville.
Dear Sarah,
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.
I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break. Yet my love of country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me. And, I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hope that in future years, when God willing we might have still lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable man-hood around us.
If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you. Nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless how foolish I have sometimes been.
But oh Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around the ones they love, I shall always be with you. Through the brightest day and the darkest night, always, always. And when a cool breeze fans your cheek it shall be my breath. Or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead. Think I am gone and wait for me for. For we shall meet again.
Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first battle of Bull Run.
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