The Tragedy Behind 'I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day'

On this episode of Our American Stories, in December 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was in mourning. His wife had died in a fire two years earlier. His son had been wounded in the Civil War. And the country itself felt beyond repair. That Christmas, he sat down and wrote a poem about the sound of church bells, one that began in sorrow and ended with a quiet return to hope. The words were later set to music and became “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, shares the story of how one of our most familiar carols was born in one of the darkest years in American history.

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