VIEWPOINT

 

excerpted  from the introduction to the book: 

LOST IN THE VICTORY

By Susan Johnson Hadler and Ann Bennett Mix

Since ancient times, fatherless children have been referred to as "orphans." In the United States, benefits paid to the fatherless children of war were given to widows and "orphans." Yet cultural ignorance of the existence of "war orphans" in this country goes so deeply that even those of us who are orphans are surprised by this description. Many will say, "I’m not an orphan; I had my mother." Or "I don’t think of myself that way." The dictionary, however, describes an orphan as a child who is bereft of one parent or both.

 

Near the end of the Civil War, in his Second Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln spoke of the dead soldier’s child as "his orphan."