Words

I was watching Saving Private Ryan tonight. And it features a letter a man once wrote to a woman. Now, the letter was incorrect as to the number it concerns, that number was less. Two or three I think, not five. But the five has become as real as anything. It's words are magical. Despite the irony of the mixed-up number, there is no irony, here only the truth. See, words are magic. Giving things names and voice to names is what magic is, it is power over symbols and reality and all those bits in between. Magic. The two or three are five now, though thankfully not then. So in the spirit of a post I did not to long ago, and the post I did earlier on the rhetoric of liberty. I just wanted to hilight this bit from the man that I think was the greatest American writer ever. Ever.

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864.

Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts:

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln