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Originally Posted by '68OrangeSunshine
Outstanding.
I remember going to the cemetery as a boy with my Mom and grandparents to put flowers and flags on the graves of Union veterans, deceased, on May 30th.
My GreatGrandfather, James B Sullivan had emigrated from Toronto Canada to join the Union Army. He was idealistically motivated to be an Abolitionist.[His Canadian family disowned him for it.] He was young and bright, and had held a junior reserve commission in his former country. He was made an officer and attached to the Quartermaster Corps in Chicago. He stayed in Chicago after the war and became a journalist and lawyer. He was very active in the Grand Army of the Republic, formed during the Civil War as a social soldiers' fraternity and became a powerful veterans' organization after it.
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Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the letters written home at the time is the number of men motivated by idealism. It was not patriotism, really, not in our modern sense--and your GreatGranfather is an example of that. They had a vision of what they wanted the country to be, and they fought--and, all too often died--to bring it about. No rose-colored glasses here: it was a flawed nation that resulted. But they thought the attempt was worth their lives, and that willingness made them great men to whom we owe a great debt still.