The Local Story behind the Carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas in 2020, many are wondering has there ever been a more difficult season to work through Christmas. We are experiencing a medical crisis with thousands dying and many more sick from the pandemic. We have severe racial and political unrest and even a financial crisis taking place. Families are not permitted to gather or are strongly discouraged from doing so, and it appears this Christmas of 2020 is going to be different than anything we have ever experienced.

It would be easy to think we have it tough and we are alone in humanity and history in what we are experiencing. As we turn the pages back in our local history to the time of the Civil War in the Fredericksburg area, we are reminded of what our country and even our local community was experiencing on Christmas. In December of 1863, our country was at war, right in the middle of the Civil War between the North and the South. The Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania and Orange areas locally became a strategic location for the war, that many called the eastern theatre of the Civil War. There were several major battles and campaigns in our area. Just one year prior in December of 1862, nearly 17,000 casualties occurred in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

A few months later and a few miles west, at the Battle of Chancellorsville over 30,000 casualties in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania. A year after Chancellorsville, and a few more miles west, another 30,000 casualties occurred in the Battle of the Wilderness in Locust Grove. A few days later and a few more miles south east, another 30,000 casualties at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.

Christmas for the country and for our local community in the years of 1863 and 1864 was a disaster to say the least. Each one of these conflicts had several hundred thousands of troops marching through the locals’ properties, taking

their homes, and using their property for firewood, equipment, field hospitals, and command centers. Many times troops left nothing but destruction behind. Imagine a Christmas where over 100,000 casualties have taken place in your community, and there is a wake of destruction left behind. Most families experienced the death of a husband or a son.

In all some 660,000 deaths would occur because of the civil war. That is hard to fathom. We are approaching 350,000 deaths in the US because of COVID with a US population of about 330 million. The US population at the time of the war was only about 30 million and the male population, of which almost all of these deaths were a result of, was half of that.

Not only was our country dealing with contention, war, and political unrest, they were also dealing with their own medical emergencies and pandemic of sorts. Nearly two thirds of the deaths in the civil war were due to infectious disease. Typhoid fever was running rampant through the army camps and hospitals.

In December of 1863, right in the middle these major battles in our area, was a smaller battle or campaign in Orange, Virginia called the Battle of Mine Run where nearly 2,000 casualties took place. It is here where we find the back story of the well known Christmas hymn, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The son Charley, of celebrated literary critic and poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was a Union soldier that fought in the Mine Run Campaign. It had already been a difficult time for the Longfellow family. Charley’s mother was burned to death two years earlier when her dress caught on fire. His father Henry was severely burned in the face when trying to save her and put out the fire. Henry was burned severely enough that he could not even attend his wife’s funeral.

Later Henry wondered if he would be committed to an insane asylum due to his grief. Charley, his son, was wounded severely in the battle of Mine Run on November 27, 1863. Charley was shot through the left shoulder with the bullet exiting under the right shoulder blade. The bullet had traveled across his back and skimmed his spine. He avoided being paralyzed by an inch. Charley was carried to New Hope Church in Orange, Virginia, and then to the near by Rapidan River, a few miles from our home where I sit now! The telegram reached his father Henry on December 1st 1863. Immediately, Henry and Charley’s two younger sons took a train from Massachusetts to Washington D.C. After arriving Henry was alarmed when told by the army surgeon that his son’s wound was very serious and that paralysis may set in. A few weeks later on Christmas Day, 1863 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would write the now famous lyrics to the poem that would be turned to music a decade later. “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

and wild and sweet

The words repeat