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`Goodwill to men,' indeed.(News)

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From: The Boston Herald
Date: 20071225
Author:Fitzgerald, Joe

Byline: JOE FITZGERALD

It was a time of bloody conflict, not unlike the times we live in now, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was especially heavy-hearted because of the crippling wounds sustained by the oldest of his five children, Charles, as Americans battled one another in a Civil War.

So on Christmas morning, 1864, four months before Lee surrendered to Grant on the steps of the Appomattox Court House, this Massachusetts poet began to pen the lines of what would become a transcendent song of Christmas, the favorite of them all at this address.

"I HEARD THE BELLS ON ...

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