Extraordinaria y profunda carta a su esposa de un soldado de la Unión que murió en la primera batalla de Bull Run.
Este otro enlace presenta así a la carta:
Love of country is not unique to Americans, but in a democracy, sending citizens to war requires far more than a dictator's fiat.
Es verdaderamente conmovedora.
ReplyDeleteEsta carta es emocionante. Y a que no saben donde ya la había leído...
ReplyDeleteEstá incluida en "Strength", otro ensayo de Bill Whittle del libro "Silent America".
Se puede leer acá.
Lean lo que escribe Bill luego de transcribir la carta :
Major Sullivan Ballou was killed one week later at the first battle of Bull Run.
The most remarkable thing about this letter is simply how ordinary such thoughts were in that day. Many, of course, have heard of this letter thanks to Ken Burns and his amazing documentary, The Civil War. Many have said it might be the greatest love letter ever written. And I would agree, but look deeper…
Major Ballou is, in effect, writing this letter as an apology. It is an apology to his wife and sons that his love for his country has called him away, to leave that which he loves so dearly alone and undefended in a world very much harder than our own. Until I read the unedited letter I myself never suspected that Maj. Ballou was an orphan; how bitter it must have been for him to willingly condemn his own two children to a fatherless existence in the days before life insurance and Social Security.
Look at how this man views his country. Here he stands, a beacon of love and sacrifice against the gloom of historical anonymity; a man ready to sacrifice his overwhelming love for his wife, his children and his life for a cause which he believes supercedes them all. More than anything, this letter speaks of a selflessness and gratitude that surpasses modern understanding. There is not a shred of victimhood, not a whiff of regret or bitterness from start to finish.
There are people who will read this letter and cry. I am one of those people. To me, the sentiments expressed with such casual eloquence are the absolute pinnacle of what the endless human struggle entails: Courage. Honor. Duty.
And yet, and yet…for all those hard virtues, how much love is in this letter? How much joy? How much beauty? How much pride and dignity? How much confidence? How much compassion? How much sacrifice?
How much strength is in that letter?
There are people who will read this letter and call men like Sullivan Ballou idiots and fools. They will mock those values and say they wasted their lives, and abandoned their children, to die horrible deaths at the hands of their brothers for no reason other than foolish jingoism and false glory. Such people will say that he was a mere cog in the interests of rich and powerful men struggling only to grow their own wallets. But Sullivan Ballou is above their derision and deconstruction. He had a level of courage and moral clarity so far beyond these critics that it goes through them, invisible and undetected, like an X-ray.
Those people will never know what he knew, and what some of us struggle to retain today. It is beyond them, as far beyond them as Shakespeare is to a slug or a sponge. I pity these gutless, heartless, soulless, guilt-ridden, self-obsessed, self-hating people. But every generation, it seems, we glorify the self ever further, place personality further above character, and steadily create from the security and prosperity provided by better men and women a wave of smug, unprincipled, ungrateful Narcissists who can see nothing beyond the nearest mirror and hold nothing sacred but themselves. Nothing is worth dying for to such people, because to them, the end of them means the end of everything. I once heard such a tower of self-obsession, Dr. Helen Caldicott, admit exactly such a thing on Public Radio. One of the reasons she fights so hard against nuclear war, she said, was because she can’t shake the idea that if she were to die that would be the end of…well, the entire Universe.
I wasn’t shocked that she said it. I was only shocked that she admitted it.
And you mark these words: in another 143 years, people like you and me will still be reading this letter and weeping at its selfless, immortal beauty, while people like Ted Rall will be as anonymous and forgotten as some crude pornographic cartoon carved in an outhouse wall in 1861.
Me mandé tremendo cut & paste pero me olvidé de agradecerle al Blogovido por postear esto... Fue lo primero que leí hoy a la mañana, y me volví a emocionar como cuando lo leí por primera vez.
ReplyDeleteDe nada, para eso estamos.
ReplyDeleteEn esta carta se vé qué tipo de ciudadanos tan virtuosos son necesarios para forjar una gran república, por qué una gran república es algo tan extraordinario.
Sólo los podés comparar con la república romana.