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“Coosawatchie, South Carolina, December 25, 1861
My Dear Daughter,
Having
distributed such poor Christmas gifts as I had to those around me, I
have been looking for something for you. Trifles even are hard to get in
these war times, and you must not therefore expect more. I have sent
you what I thought most useful in your separation from me and hope it
will be of some service.
Though
stigmatized as “vile dross,” it has never been a drug with me. That you
may never want for it, restrict your wants to your necessities. Yet how
little it will purchase! But see how God provides for our pleasure in
every way. To compensate for such “trash,” I send you some sweet violets
that I gathered for you this morning while covered with dense white
frost, whose crystals glittered in the bright sun like diamonds, and
formed a brooch of great beauty and sweetness which could not be
fabricated by the expenditure of a world of money.
May
God guard and preserve you for me, my dear daughter! Among the
calamities of war, the hardest to bear, perhaps, is the separation of
families and friends. Yet all must be endured to accomplish our
independence and maintain our self-government. In my absence from you I
have thought of you very often and regretted I could do nothing for your
comfort.
Your
old home, if not destroyed by our enemies, has been so desecrated that I
cannot bear to think of it. I should have preferred it to have been
wiped from the earth, its beautiful hill sunk, and its sacred trees
buried rather than to have been degraded by the presence of those who
revel in the ill they do for their own selfish purposes.
I
pray for a better spirit and that the hearts of our enemies may be
changed. In your homeless condition I hope you make yourself contented
and useful. Occupy yourself in aiding those more helpless than yourself.
Think always of your father. R.E. Lee.”
(And to One of His Daughters, Civil War Christmas Album, Philip Van Doren, editor, Hawthorne Books, 1961, page 19)
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