FOLDED UP NOTE FROM A LOST POCKET

 

It was just a folded up note, left in the pocket of an untouched Union soldier's jacket, left in a trunk in an attic and forgotten.  A disintegrating piece of paper that said my great great uncle was in the company of these men, sent to fight a great war that might never have happened if time hadn't caught up to new ideas of how democracy should work.

Lives are sometimes sacrificed for new ideas. This is history... 

My family came here in the early days, not so much for the religious freedom but for the opportunity to live on their own terms and take advantage of the freedoms available to become successful merchants and leaders of men.  It might have been vanity that drove them - or greed and selfishness - but nevertheless it is the desire to go over the hill and create something entirely new.

So here is a list of men from many walks of life and backgrounds, all whom signed up for the chance to fight and find the strength and bravery in them that only a war can provide.  

Why today do we discount all that this list once stood for?  I could have left it in the pocket of the jacket long lost to a corner, but I didn't.  I folded it gingerly and put it back together as carefully as possible not to disturb a molecule of the paper, so that I could read it, touch it, and remember.