Love letters reveal a great deal about how you feel or how someone else feels. The love letter is a romantic device in films, books and reality. Love letters are an enduring part of our history and our culture. So I thought we’d take a moment today and enjoy some glimpses of love letters from the past.
Sullivan Ballou
Sullivan Ballou served in the Union Army and he wrote this letter to his wife Sarah shortly before he died at the First Battle of Manassas during the Civil War. The letter was never mailed, but it was recovered and later given to her. Viewers of Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary may remember this beautiful letter.
Excerpt:
I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death — and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.
I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and “the name of honor that I love more than I fear death” have called upon me, and I have obeyed.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.
Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon was King Henry VIII first wife and mother to Queen Mary. Though Henry divorced here in 1533, Catherine remained devoted to him until her death in 1538. She wrote this letter prior to her death.
My Lord and Dear Husband,
I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me, with a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own body, for the which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares.
For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that He will also pardon you.
For the rest I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage-portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants, I solicit a year’s pay more than their due, lest they should be unprovided for.
Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.
I suppose these letters are sad, the last loving thoughts of those destined to die soon, yet the love is palpable in both and a reminder that love endures if only as letters on paper.