Then as Anna listened another sound began to rise within the first. It began as a low keening, like the wind in a bottle tree, almost indiscernible amid the guns. Yet it was there, and it grew and grew, gaining strength and timbre until suddenly a new note broke away and was taken up: a high weird quavering like nothing that Anna had ever heard, that peopled the smoke with an army of mourning phantoms. Anna had heard the men talk of this, too–the uncanny demon cry of the Rebel army going into the attack–and now here it was for real, echoing across violence and death for the last time in a wild crescendo that seemed to peak and yet peak again: descanting blood, crying lost youth and the loss of all dreams. One last time it shrilled out of the rolling smoke, then collapsed all at once into a maelstrom of voices–the deep snarling utterance of thousands of men in hell. Howard Bahr
About This Quote

The death of the thousands of soldiers in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 gave a new meaning to the "Gettysburg Address." Abraham Lincoln's speech, which had been intended to inspire the troops fighting for the Union, instead inspired a nation. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful testament to the power of words. This speech is so powerful that it never has been surpassed in history.

Source: The Black Flower: A Novel Of The Civil War

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