My Logos Bible Software is a valuable tool for Bible Study and related topics. A few months ago, a package of additional texts from Greece and Rome and other places was available for downloading. And there was also a collection of Civil War veterans and their letters.

Here is a sample of letter from Gordon Meade to his wife.

October 11, 1845.

The mail will leave early to-morrow morning, by a steamer for New Orleans; so that in twelve days you will receive this. How much I wish I could accompany it. What joy to be once more at the northeast corner of Schuylkill Seventh and Spruce Streets; but, alas, it is useless to be speculating on impossibilities! Here I am, and here I must stay, and the best thing I can do is to be cheerful and contented. My health, thank God, is excellent, and as long as it so continues I shall be reconciled. I would have preferred going with Major Bache; but I should have been much more exposed, and my life in greater danger from disease than now; though the certainty of returning to you, and having an office in Philadelphia, would have reconciled me to all that. I therefore join with the major in our mutual regret at not serving together, for I have found him the most thorough-bred gentleman I ever met. Our intercourse has been of the most delightful character, and I am highly gratified that a year should have passed on duty with him, with so pleasant a conclusion.

Meade, G. Vol. 1: The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army (G. G. Meade, Ed.) (30–31). Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library.


Once you get used to the fact that you have letters you can read from war veterans in your Bible study software, it gets kind of interesting. Take a look at the carefully worded sentences and character descriptions in Meade's letter. And notice the really nice things he writes about Major Bache.

We just don't write like this anymore, do we? We don't write letters for one. And most of our writing is shorter, quicker, more abbreviated. And to talk so glowingly of someone is not done nearly at all like it was in Meade's time.

This was written some 15 years before the war of course, on the eve of war with Mexico in fact, but it is a product of those times. And it is common to find writing like this, in fact, much more so than this among the many other letters and correspondence of those times.


Here's another letter or part of it. Well written and commonly wise.

camp at Corpus Christi, Texas, December 25, 1845.



To-day is Christmas. Need I say how I have longed to be with you, and how my heart has beat with the recollections of former happy Christmas Days! Last night I lay for hours on my rude bed, in my tent, with the cold wind whistling around me, and felt warm and happy, as I related to memory the truly happy Christmas Eves I had spent with you. I thought of last year. Do you recollect what a beautiful, clear night it was, and mother and Mariamne and myself going out in a cab and making purchases; how thronged the streets were with crowds of happy faces; what hustle and commotion in each house when the bell was rung; what joyous and merry meetings then were held? And, afterwards, at the Major's20 to see the interest with which he was putting aside the various presents for each of his children! Alas, poor fellow, like myself, he has but the recollection of these pleasures to support him now! Here nothing is seen or heard but the regular sound of the drum, sending the men to bed, and the shouts of drunken men in the little town adjoining our camp, which has sprung into existence since the arrival of the army. Still, I am most thankful to Almighty God for the blessings He has thus far showered upon us; you and my dear children, healthy, comfortable, and happily fixed; me, though separated from you, still in good health and as good spirits as I could be under the circumstances. With ample means to support us, all our wants gratified, blessed with the loveliest children, at once a source of pride and the most perfect happiness, who that reflects on this picture but must say 'tis black ingratitude to complain! And if I have complained, it has been because I was not well, irritable from indisposition, and because I did not reflect, and instead of expatiating on my annoyances, turn over in my mind all the blessings of which I was the recipient.

Meade, G. Vol. 1: The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army (G. G. Meade, Ed.) (41–42). Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library.

In Kaplan's book, Lincoln, The Biography of a Writer, you see the great pains Lincoln took to find the right words, cadence and thought patterns, clarity and context for his words. From our viewpoint you could come to believe that Lincoln and others of his time were obsessed with words. I tend to think that that it was a time when the right use of words mattered more, much more than it does today.

Can we write like this again? I don't know. Maybe not. I don't know that I could make the time for it. But maybe I should. I know one thing, some words are simply communication. But every now and then, some words become instruments of communion. I want to write to inspire communion. I want to write like that.