Her hands trembled with fright as she held the letter closer, but as she read the next paragraph she relaxed.
“Dear Wife, if I have concealed aught from you it is because I did not wish to lay a burden on your shoulders, to add
to your worries for my physical safety with those of my mental turmoil. But I can keep nothing from you, for you know me
too well. Do not be alarmed. I have no wound. I have not been ill. I have enough to eat and occasionally a bed to sleep
in. A soldier can ask for no more. But, Melanie, heavy thoughts lie on my heart and I will open my heart to you.
“These summer nights I lie awake, long after the camp is sleeping, and I look up at the stars and, over and over, I
wonder, ‘Why are you here, Ashley Wilkes? What are you fighting for?’
“Not for honor and glory, certainly. War is a dirty business and I do not like dirt. I am not a soldier and I have no
desire to seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth. Yet, here I am at the wars—whom God never intended to
be other than a studious country gentleman. For, Melanie, bugles do not stir my blood nor drums entice my feet and I see
too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern selves, believing that one of us could whip a
dozen Yankees, believing that King Cotton could rule the world. Betrayed, too, by words and catch phrases, prejudices and
hatreds coming from the mouths of those highly placed, those men whom we respected and revered—‘King Cotton, Slavery,
States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’
“And so when I lie on my blanket and look up at the stars and say ‘What are you fighting for?’ think of States’
Rights and cotton and the darkies and the Yankees whom we have been bred to hate, and I know that none of these is the
reason why I am fighting. Instead, I see Twelve Oaks and remember how the moonlight slants across the white columns, and
the unearthly way the magnolias look, opening under the moon, and how the climbing roses make the side porch shady even
at the hottest noon. And I see Mother, sewing there, as she did when I was a little boy. And I hear the darkies coming
home across the fields at dusk, tired and singing and ready for supper, and the sound of the windlass as the bucket goes
down into the cool well. And there’s the long view down the road to the river, across the cotton fields, and the mist
rising from the bottom lands in the twilight. And that is why I’m here who have no love of death or misery or glory and
no hatred for anyone. Perhaps that is what is called patriotism, love of home and country. But Melanie, it goes deeper
than that. For, Melanie, these things I have named are but the symbols of the thing for which I risk my life, symbols of
the kind of life I love. For I am fighting for the old days, the old ways I love so much but which, I fear, are now gone
forever, no matter how the die may fall. For, win or lose, we lose just the same.
“If we win this war and have the Cotton Kingdom of our dreams, we still have lost, for we will become a different
people and the old quiet ways will go. The world will be at our doors clamoring for cotton and we can command our own
price. Then, I fear, we will become like the Yankees, at whose money-making activities, acquisitiveness and commercialism
we now sneer. And if we lose, Melanie, if we lose!
“I am not afraid of danger or capture or wounds or even death, if death must come, but I do fear that once this war is
over, we will never get back to the old times. And I belong in those old times. I do not belong in this mad present of
killing and I fear I will not fit into any future, try though I may. Nor will you, my dear, for you and I are of the same
blood. I do not know what the future will bring, but it cannot be as beautiful or as satisfying as the past.
“I lie and look at the boys sleeping near me and I wonder if the twins or Alex or Cade think these same thoughts. I
wonder if they know they are fighting for a Cause that was lost the minute the first shot was fired, for our Cause is
really our own way of living and that is gone already. But I do not think they think these things and they are lucky.
“I had not thought of this for us when I asked you to marry me. I had thought of life going on at Twelve Oaks as it
had always done, peacefully, easily, unchanging. We are alike, Melanie, loving the same quiet things, and I saw before us
a long stretch of uneventful years in which to read, hear music and dream. But not this! Never this! That this could
happen to us all, this wrecking of old ways, this bloody slaughter and hate! Melanie, nothing is worth it—States’
Rights, nor slaves, nor cotton. Nothing is worth what is happening to us now and what may happen, for if the Yankees whip
us the future will be one of incredible horror. And, my dear, they may yet whip us.
