Though there is no telling how long it will take for you to recieve my letter, I feel it is my duty to write to you. Not to mention that when I write to you, I think of you, and when I think of you, I am no longer where I am now, which is where I least want to be.

Right now we are camped a little ways from Bull Run. We’ve had a second battle there, I’m afraid, with much the same results. Those Johny Rebs won again, and in the process have endangered D.C.

Have no fear, though, Susannah, things will turn out all right. We’ll win this war, I know it. Soon the fighting will be over and I’ll come home. You and I will get married in the little church on Maplestreet and we’ll buy a house together. We’ll have kids and quilting parties and whatever else your little heart desires. But until that time, I need your thoughts. I need your thoughts and prayers. We all do.

Do this for me, Susannah. Every night, go out into the dark and send a kiss heaven-bound. God Almight will be sure it gets to me. I’ll send one right back to you.. So if next morn you feel the wind flutter by and brush your cheek, or a lone raindrop fall from the sky, know that it is only the angels, delivering my kiss.

What I wouldn’t give to see you right now. You and all the family and town....

War is a horrible thing, Susannah. More horrible than I can describe; more horrible than I want to describe. It....it makes you crazy.

Being in a battle is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and nothing I hope to experience again. You lose your humanity. You lose your identity. You are no longer yourself, but have become, in the bloodrush, part of some larger body. It is the scariest thing to lost your identitty, to no longer know who you are.

War can make your crazy; I’m not doubtful of that. As you lay sleeping at night, you fear that the enemy is going to come creeping into your camp and....

It makes you paranoid. I have hope, dear Susannah, in you, so that I might be all right when this is over. Some of the men and boys, though, (yes, I am afraid we have resorted to boys fighting. Letting our own sons and younger brothers get killed in a man’s war) will not come home from the war the same. They will be changed like no other thing can change them.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m in this war as I’m here, writing a letter to my love. I am very well off, mind you. Many here are dying, injured, or starving. We are not nearly as bad as the South, but life is no Sunday picnic. I wonder what I’m doing here, when this war won’t even affect our lives. Up in Boston, we don’t have to worry about slaves and a “ruined way of life” as they put it. But then I think about it. And Susannah, if I don’t fight, who will?

This is my war, almost as much as any slave’s. It’s about our God given right that no man can have taken away, no matter what his color. It’s about our country. No part of it can just decide to unattach themselves from it anymore than your arm can someday decide to jump off your body and skitter away. We are a country, a living body, and nobody can just change that.

I’m fighting for the future. Yes, I know the future is an uncertain thing and that the Second Coming could be any day, but it could still be years yet. I’m fighting so that even if every single man in the United States were to die in this war, our children, and our children’s children, and their children, will look back and say, “What a foolish war.” I want them to think it’s foolish, because I want them to realize how foolish slavery is. I want them to grow up with a black as a neighbor and friend; I want them to grow up with equal treatment for everyone.

I guess I am fighting for you, too, Susannah, for you are my strengthold. I’m fighting so that you might be proud of me, and so that when this is all said and done, I can treasure even more what I have taken forgranted. You are my sanity here, in a war where everything is insane. Everyone is insane.

I will come back to, Susannah. If not in the flesh, than as an angel to watch over you and guide you along the way.

So, dear Susannah, say a little prayer for me, remember to send a kiss my way every now and then, and be grateful that you are safe and protected. We will not back down, and we will not lose.

Forever my deepest love,
Samuel Aaron Hamilton

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Eighth grade history assignment. Love Sam Ham's name, lol. Didn't notice that until today. How cool.

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