Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The letter was safely delivered, the matter investigated, but nothing could be found for Charley, so he reluctantly resumed his studies at Harvard when the autumn term began. Henry was greatly relieved to have his son safely back at his books and lectures, but no small measure of apprehension lingered, for he knew Charley’s hunger for the war remained unsatisfied—and he was not the sort of young man who could stoically ignore his appetites.

  On September 17, less than a fortnight after Charley resumed his studies, the Boston press announced that Union general George McClellan had managed to repulse General Lee’s advance into the North in an enormously costly battle along Antietam Creek in Maryland. Henry was horrified to behold the interminable lists of the dead and wounded, and even as he prayed for the deceased and their families, he also thanked God that thus far his sons had been spared. Soon thereafter, Sumner wrote from Washington that although President Lincoln had been greatly displeased that General McClellan had not pressed his advantage but had allowed the battered Confederate army to withdraw to Virginia, he had declared the stalemate a victory—to serve some other purpose, or so Sumner suspected.

  Only a few days after Henry received Sumner’s letter, the president’s greater purpose was revealed when newspapers across the North published a proclamation in which President Lincoln declared that “on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

  In progressive Boston, people of color and abolitionists of all races rejoiced, for Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation had brought the country significantly closer to that glorious, inevitable day when slavery would cease forever, for everyone. Governor Andrew expressed regret that the president would delay bestowing freedom upon the slaves until January, but still he declared the proclamation “grand and sublime after all.” At the Boston Music Hall on Winter Street, famed orator and abolitionist Wendell Phillips announced that at long last, he could finally rejoice beneath the Stars and Stripes, while in Washington, Sumner delivered a speech in the Senate praising the president’s long-awaited decree.

  That was not to say that the preliminary proclamation escaped criticism, even among those who celebrated it, for many believed that it did not do enough to ensure liberty for all. The proclamation called for the abolition of slavery only in states that were in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, so if a state agreed to return to the Union before then, slavery could continue there. The proclamation did nothing to free the enslaved people living within the loyal Union border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, as well as Confederate territory that had come under Union control in Tennessee and parts of Louisiana. Upon reflection, Henry found it difficult to disagree with Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune and frequent critic of the Lincoln administration, when he complained that the president had emancipated slaves where the Union could not free them and had kept them enslaved in places where the Union did enjoy the power to give them liberty.

  Henry could not deny that the proclamation was far from perfect—and yet, despite its limitations, he rejoiced in it, for it proved that the nation was finally moving toward freedom and liberty for all. The old Union was gone forever. When the war was won and the country restored and whole, it would be a new United States, truly a more perfect union.

  • • •

  Perhaps the proclamation and its promise of freedom had inspired him, or perhaps the work of translating Dante’s Inferno had rekindled his dormant creative spark, or perhaps observing Charley safely ensconced at Harvard had eased his troubled mind, but somehow Henry found himself writing poetry again.

  He had no title for his work as yet, but he envisioned a long narrative poem in the manner of Chaucer or Boccaccio, a series of stories told by an eclectic gathering of men from various walks of life, all uniquely American, telling tales as their travels brought them together fortuitously at an inn. The Red Horse Tavern in Sudbury, a stagecoach stop twenty miles from Cambridge, inspired the setting for his poem, just as several of his acquaintances provided models for the storytelling characters. Henry worked on the poem between translating cantos of Dante, and as the autumn passed, he enjoyed visiting the quaint country inn in his imagination, and he found comfort in composing poetry again, even when it required great effort.

  By the end of October he had completed “The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi” and had begun “King Robert of Sicily.” On the last day of the month, he visited the Red Horse Tavern with his friend and editor James Fields to refresh his memory and invigorate his imagination. Beautiful summery weather blessed their journey as they passed through a lovely valley on a winding road shaded by grand, ancient oaks. The rambling, dilapidated building had been constructed more than two hundred years before and looked every decade of it, but in its heyday it had been an essential wayside for all travelers heading west from Boston. Even in its hoary old age it possessed a certain ineffable charm that delighted Henry, and that he was determined to capture in his poem.

  He was especially pleased to discover a verse some long-ago traveler had engraved upon a window in the parlor. “‘What do you think!/Here is good drink,’” he read aloud to Fields. “‘Perhaps you may not know it,/If not in haste, do stop and taste,/You merry folks will shew it.’ I wonder who the author could have been, and when he left these lines to mark his visit.”

  “I rather wonder if he obtained the innkeeper’s permission before scratching mediocre poetry into the glass,” Fields replied.

  “I hope he didn’t. It makes for a better story that way.” Henry turned away from the window and regarded his friend thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should have one of my characters do the same.”

  “The college student might,” Fields mused, “although I do hope you’ll have him scratch a more elegant verse.”

  “A playful, simple poem might suit the character better.”

  “Then choose a more eloquent character to vandalize the window. You do have quite an unlikely assortment to select from.”

  “Unlikely? How so?”

  Fields waved a hand and shrugged, conveying that he thought it obvious and had meant no offense. “A college student, a Yankee innkeeper, a musician, a poet, a theologian, a Sicilian, and a Spanish Jew. One would not expect to encounter such men gathered around the same table at any inn I’ve ever entered.”

  “Ah, perhaps not, but their very differences affirm the nature of our immigrant land,” Henry said. “E Pluribus Unum. In my view that does not refer only to states, but also to our varied people. Whatever brought these strangers together in this place—chance, fate, or divine intervention—their lives will be forever transformed, forever bound together even if only by the slenderest of threads, because they shared stories.”

  Fields tugged at his ear, considering. “I suppose they must have something in common, or they would not have been at the inn at that particular day and hour.”

  “Yes, precisely,” said Henry, pleased that his friend had discovered the implicit truth within his poem, one he suspected would elude many a reader. All people—white and colored, slave and free, Union and Confederate—shared a common humanity belied by their outward differences. In a time of discord, in a land torn by war, no truth was more important to remember than that.

  • • •

  Autumn faded into winter, and before long the Christmas season was upon them again, but as the citizens of Boston and Cambridge prepared for their restrained wartime celebrations, the Longfellow family received frightening news from the battlefields of Virginia: Henry’s nephew Stephen, a private in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, Company H, had been wounded in the bloody, calamitous Battle of Fredericksburg, and no one knew what had become of him.

  Henry’s eldest brother, dissipated and unreliable, was of no
use to Stephen’s desperate, frightened mother, so Henry immediately wrote to Sumner to ask his friend to use his connections to learn where his nephew was, and how he was. After several harrowing days, Sumner discovered the young soldier’s whereabouts, and reported that his wound appeared slight and he seemed to be recovering well.

  Much relieved, Henry and his sister Anne swiftly wrote letters and made arrangements for Stephen’s care. All the while, Charley passed in and out of Henry’s study, his hands thrust in his pockets, his expression dark and full of consternation. Henry assumed that worry for his injured cousin had evoked Charley’s bleak, smoldering mood and tried to reassure him that his cousin would survive.

  “They call the Massachusetts Twentieth the Harvard Regiment,” Charley responded. “All the officers are Harvard graduates, and nearly all the privates had attended Harvard.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “I should have been there in the thick of it, with my classmates, by my cousin’s side.”

  “I’m heartily glad you were not,” said Henry sharply. “The Union suffered more than twelve thousand casualties in that terrible battle. The Confederates suffered more than five thousand. It’s the height of hubris to wish yourself among them, where so many were slain, wounded, or captured by the enemy.”

  Charley glowered. “Better to die nobly than to cower within a fortress of books and lecture halls.”

  As Charley stormed from the room, Henry rested his elbows on the desk and buried his head in his hands. “Better to live,” he murmured, though he knew his son was beyond hearing. “Better you should live.”

  Later, when Charley’s temper had cooled, he returned to his father seeking permission to go to his cousin and tend him in his infirmary. Henry refused, but diplomatically, pointing out that Charley knew nothing of nursing, and that his aunt Anne had Stephen’s care well in hand. He did not admit that his predominant reason for forbidding Charley to go was that he feared his son would not come home again. While some young fellows would be repulsed by the horrific sights and smells and sounds of a military hospital, the ever contrary Charley would probably discover in the harrowing scenes more inspiration to enlist, more evidence that his country needed him.

  Henry sent a parcel of food and other necessities to Stephen rather than send his eldest son, and a few days before Christmas, he received a letter in reply, a simple note of thanks and wishes for a merry Christmas, brief but reassuring. And then Christmas was upon them, Henry’s second without his beloved wife. His brother Alexander sent presents for the girls’ Christmas tree, and Henry sent gifts and letters to all the family in Portland, but for him Christmas was but another melancholy day, and at the end of it, he felt exhausted and drained from the effort of making the holiday merry for his children.

  On New Year’s Day, however, all the joy and exultation that had eluded Henry at Christmastime descended with dizzying intensity, for on that day President Lincoln would enact the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves within rebellious states “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

  It seemed to Henry that all of Boston and Cambridge held its breath anxiously as they awaited the announcement from Washington by telegraph that the president had signed the document. Henry marked the day in quiet reflection at home, but restless, irrepressible Charley went out to witness the momentous event in the company of likeminded friends, those few who had not marched off to war. When he returned home later that night, he told Henry that he had attended an enormous gathering at Tremont Temple, nearly three thousand determined, impatient abolitionists including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. When evening descended and still no word from the capital had come, apprehensions soared, and voices rose in uneasy murmurs and angry grumbles that President Lincoln had been persuaded not to enact the Proclamation after all.

  “When the people could bear it no longer,” Charley reported, flush with lingering excitement, “Judge Thomas Russell went to the Boston Journal offices to see whether the Proclamation had been signed. He discovered that the news had just arrived over the telegraph, and so he asked if he could take the dispatches to Tremont Temple and read them to the waiting crowd. Although he vowed to return them promptly afterward, he was refused—so he seized the dispatches and fled back to Tremont Temple with the night editor in hot pursuit.”

  Henry had to smile at the scene so comically and vividly depicted. “And did the judge succeed?”

  “Oh, yes. He had a bit of a head start and proved the faster runner. The night editor didn’t stand a chance of overtaking him.” Grinning, Charley dropped into an armchair and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “When the great news was announced and the Proclamation read aloud, a thrill shot through the crowd. I’ve never seen such intense enthusiasm. The people seemed almost wild with jubilation, and the celebration spilled out into the streets—parades, speeches, bands playing, men cheering, ladies waving their handkerchiefs.”

  “It is the dawning of a new day, and well worth celebrating.”

  “You should’ve been there. Emerson was.”

  “Then the fellowship of Massachusetts poets was well represented despite my absence.” Henry regarded his eldest son fondly. “I think I enjoyed your retelling of the events more than I would have had I experienced them myself.”

  “But I forgot to tell you the most astonishing news of all.” Charley straightened in his chair, his eyes alight with eager anticipation. “President Lincoln made a few changes to the preliminary document that appeared in the papers last September. Among them, he announced that men of suitable condition among the newly freed slaves would be received into military service to garrison forts and other places, and to man vessels of all kinds.”

  Henry stared, dumbfounded. “President Lincoln means to create regiments of colored soldiers?”

  “And sailors too, from the sound of it.”

  “Sumner has been calling upon the president to put rifles into the hands of colored men from the outset of the war,” Henry said in wonder. “Time and again Mr. Lincoln has rejected his proposals out of hand. I can only imagine what Sumner is thinking and feeling at this moment. I wish he were here now, so I might see the expression on his face and shake his hand.”

  “It is a glorious thing that colored soldiers will at last be permitted to take up arms in defense of the Union.”

  “And to fight for the freedom of their race.”

  “How will it look to the world if I, who have enjoyed every privilege of wealth and success, every benefit of education and good family, sit comfortably at home while these brave men who have already endured so much will fight for the country whose blessings they have been denied, but which I have enjoyed as my birthright?”

  Again Henry found himself without words, so taken aback was he by the sudden turn the conversation had taken. Never would he have expected Charley to turn the Emancipation Proclamation into an argument for his own enlistment. “I care nothing for the opinion of a judgmental world,” he managed to say.

  “I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were, I care. I care very much. Every day I safely stroll the paths of Harvard, or idle away hours with my nose in a book, I feel my honor being weighed and found wanting.”

  “The president’s own eldest son has not enlisted.”

  “That’s Todd Lincoln’s business and none of mine.” Charley regarded his father with steady determination. “Perhaps his father won’t bestow his blessing and he can’t bring himself to ignore the wishes of a beloved parent. Perhaps a time will come when duty to honor and country outweighs his duty to his father.”

  Henry’s gaze was equally determined. “I hope he is wise enough to forgo any rash decision that would break his father’s heart at a time when Mr. Lincoln must remain strong and steadfast for the sake of all those who depend upon him.”

  Charley inclined his head, but whether in acquiescence or simpl
e acknowledgment Henry could not say for certain.

  Their disagreement was the only unpleasantness to mar what had been a beautiful day full of sunshine, culminating in a tranquil, moonlit night. As he wrote in his journal before retiring, Henry fervently hoped that the moonlit serenity would prove a proper metaphor for the working of the Emancipation Proclamation—and of the quietude he prayed would fill his restless son’s heart and mind.

  Winter passed, and although Charley rarely spoke of enlisting after their confrontation on New Year’s Day, Henry knew the subject was ever in his thoughts. Charley plugged away at his studies with none of the enjoyment Henry had known as a young scholar, but he often escaped the confines of lecture hall and library to travel to New York with friends or to visit family in Portland. He always remembered to keep Henry apprised of his whereabouts, so when he went missing one March afternoon with no warning, without even a note left behind to explain where he had gone so suddenly and when they could expect him to return, Henry was filled with apprehension.

  Four days passed in dread and frustration with no word from Charley—and then a letter arrived at Craigie House bearing a Portland postmark.

  Dear Papa,

  You know for how long a time I have been wanting to go to war. I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer. I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good. God bless you all.