The Mine Run Campaign fought a few miles west of Lake of the Woods in November and December 1863 figured into the writing of the poem "Christmas Bells" written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, that later became the carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”
When the Civil War broke out, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles (below), wanted to join the Union army but Longfellow refused to allow him to do so. He eventually relented and Charles at age 17 joined Battery A of the 1st Massachusetts Artillery. Charles eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant.
But during the Mine Run Campaign in November 1863 he was severely wounded in the Battle of New Hope Church. The church stood just east of today’s New Hope Church at the southern end of the Culpeper Mine Road. It was being used as a Confederate field hospital and Charles was taken there for treatment. Due to the severity of his wounds, the Confederates turned him over to a Federal medical team that then sent him to Washington for further treatment. His father came down from Cambridge to stay with him. Eventually Charles returned home to a long recovery.
That 1863 Christmas was not “merry” for Longfellow, whose journal was silent for that day. Charles’ serious injuries, along with the memory of Longfellow’s wife’s death two years earlier in a freakish fire in their home, dimmed the celebration that year. But on Christmas Day, the poet took pen in hand and wrote “Christmas Bells,” a poem that showed a ray of hope shining through the horror of the war and the poet’s family tragedies.
However Longfellow left us with hope in his closing verse:
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,
with peace on earth, good-will to men.”
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men.
It was originally seven verses long, but the two pointedly directed to the Civil War were generally omitted, once the poem was put to music. The two verses omitted were:
Longfellow's poem first was published in 1865 and later set to music as the carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”