Sullivan Ballou Letter:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/sullivan_ballou.asp
Questions to be answered:
1.Why do you think Sullivan Ballou wrote this letter?
2.If you were Sullivan’s wife or children, would you plead with him not to enlist in the Union army? Why or why not?
3.In how many ways does Sullivan comfort his wife by what he writes to her?
4.Does he have regrets for himself, or only for his wife and children?
5.Sullivan writes that he is "communing with God, my country, and thee." What is his relationship to the claims that each of these make upon his life?
6.Images of "wind" and "breath" appear and reappear in the letter. How are these images related at different times to "God, my country, and thee"?
7.Sullivan says that he is perfectly willing to die to pay the debt owed to those who fell in the American Revolution. What debt, if any, do you feel you owe to Sullivan Ballou and other men like him?
