Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

It is said that plants exude poison from the roots, and soon destroy the soil unless there is a rotation of crops. Slavery was a noxious plant, deadlier than the nightshade, and it poisoned the South. The longer slavery existed, the weaker the Southern giant became, until, toiling on, the South became bankrupt through slavery, and toiling on, every year of the war under free labour found the North growing ever richer and stronger. Liberty is a giant that when it touches the soil renews its strength.

Oh, if the South had but had a better cause! History affords nothing finer than the bravery of Southern soldiers and their leaders; had they been fighting for liberty, or some great cause that would have supported them during the struggle instead of bankrupting them as slavery did, it is doubtful whether any army could have defeated their soldiers.

In Liverpool Beecher literally fought with the lions of Ephesus. The bill-boards were posted with placards in red type. All men in England who had investments in the South and wanted to break Beecher and his cause seemed to have assembled. From the moment he entered the room the great audience became a mob, and with groans, hisses, cat-calls, epithets, men interrupted the orator with cheers for the South. Speaking was like lifting up one's voice in the midst of a hurricane, or trying to speak while a typhoon was raging on the sea. For one hour the tumult raged. From time to time the police would succeed in carrying out some obstreperous individual but there were enough men scattered through the hall, each bellowing like a bull of Bashan, to make hearing impossible. To add to the tumult, from time to time, an Englishman would climb on his chair and shout, "I am ashamed of Liverpool and my country," and the confusion would break out afresh. It took one hour to wear the voices out. When Beecher told the reporters that he would speak slowly so they could hear, and thus he could reach all England, the audience grew quieter.

Beecher urged three arguments,--first, that the national prosperity is dependent upon the production of wealth, and this meant independence for the producer; second, that prosperity depends upon manufacturing and that means a high quality of educated workman; third, that prosperity is dependent upon commerce and the exchange of commodities between nations, and that means brotherhood. He urged that the more intelligent and prosperous the workman, the higher his wage, and, therefore, the better he supports as a buyer. A slave uses his feet and hands, and produces a few cents a day. A poor white labourer uses his hands and his lower head, and earns fifty cents a day. An intelligent Northern working man uses his hands and his creative intellect, and he produces a dollar a day. A highly educated worker becomes an inventor as well as a freeman, and earns five dollars a day. With this wage he buys comforts, tools, products of the loom, builds up manufactures, and promotes prosperity. For that reason a few patricians only in the South buy in the English market, while the millions of slaves demand from Sheffield only whips and manacles. Therefore slavery starves English trade.--And at last Liverpool heard him.

In Exeter Hall in London, Beecher closed his argument: "Shall we let the South go, and carry slavery with her? If a Northern working man has a mad dog by the throat shall he let that animal go to spread death? Letting the South go as a free nation is one thing, but letting her go to spread slavery over Mexico and Central America is another thing. When we kill the mad dog we will talk about letting the South go."

Beecher returned home to find himself the hero of the hour. In Plymouth Church, on Sunday morning, the audience stood for five minutes, and with their tears and silence told him of their gratitude and love. From that hour Stanton asked for his friendship, and was weekly and even daily in correspondence. He promised Beecher that immediately upon the receipt of any news from the battle-field he would send him a telegram. Indeed, the first news that the country had from Stanton of one of the great victories came to Beecher's pulpit and was read over his desk. Other great men, the President, secretaries, the generals, the statesmen, editors, lecturers, preachers, did their part, but high among co-workers ranks Henry Ward Beecher. God gave him a great task, and armed him for the battle. He loved the poor, he broke the shackles from the slave, he discovered to the world the love of God, and dying he flung his helmet into the thick of the enemy. It is for us and our children to fight our way forward to that helmet, and fling our own at last into some new fight for the emancipation of the mind and heart of earth's troubled millions.

It must be confessed that the aristocracy of England and her upper middle class, in the main, still sympathized with the South, while the English cabinet tried to maintain neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, and most of the House of Commons voted in sympathy with the South."

But the attitude of the "classes" of England was only the reflection of her scholars. Carlyle, whose early books had no sale in England, and who wrote Emerson that he had received his first money to keep him from starvation from Boston and New York, "when not a penny had been realized in England," had no sympathy with liberty and the North. As soon as his own physical wants were supplied by the American check which Emerson sent him, Carlyle began to call the war "a smoky chimney that had taken fire." "No war ever waged in my time was to me more profoundly foolish looking." (Slovenly English, contradictory thinking, and poor morals!) "Neutral I am to a degree." Then Carlyle tried to sum up his view of the situation: "Now speaks the Northern Peter to the Southern Paul: 'Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel! I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year as I do. You are going straight to hell.' Paul: 'Good words, Peter; the risk is my own. Hire you your servants by the month or day, and go straight to heaven. Leave me to my own method.' Peter: 'No, I won't. I will beat your brains out.' And he's trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot quite manage it."

No one knew better than Carlyle that there is a world diameter between the South hiring a man for life, and by force holding him in slavery. But Carlyle for three years poured out such vapid humbug, cant and hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound in his thinking or fair in his view-point during the entire war.

Even Charles Dickens, who had written denouncing slavery in his "American Notes," returned to England in the spring of 1863 to predict the overwhelming victory of the South, and to characterize the hopes of Lincoln as "a harmless hallucination." But little by little, English sentiment began to change. Goldwin Smith, of Oxford University, consented to speak at a meeting in Manchester to protest against the building and sending out of piratical ships in support of the Southern Confederacy. He affirmed boldly that "no nation ever inflicted upon another more flagrant or more maddening wrong" [in permitting the _Alabama_ to escape]. No nation with English blood in its veins had ever borne such a wrong without resentment.

Richard Cobden wrote to Mr. Beecher as to the feeling in England: "In every other instance ... the popular sympathy of this country has always leaped to the side of the insurgents the moment a rebellion has broken out. In the present case, our masses have an instinctive feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the United States. It is true that they have not much power in the direct form of a vote; but when the millions of this country are led by the religious middle class they can together prevent the government from pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies."

When Beecher appeared and spoke, he aroused, intensified, unified, and made effective this great underlying force of English popular feeling, and the unfriendly purposes of the governmental and "upper-class" element were paralyzed.

Beecher himself was very modest about his achievement. Said he: "When in October you go to a tree and give it a jar, and the fruit rains down all about you, it is not you that ripened and sent down the fruit; the whole summer has been doing that. It was my good fortune to be there when it was needed that some one should jar the tree; the fruit was not of my ripening."

Beecher returned home in November of 1863, conscious that he had risked everything in the service of his imperilled country. He found the entire North had constituted itself a Committee of Reception to welcome him home. A great public meeting was arranged in the Academy of Music in New York, and the Music Hall was crowded from pit to dome with the leaders of the city and of the North. Mr. Beecher entered the room at eight o'clock, and the whole audience rose to its feet to greet him, but not until many minutes had passed in tumultuous cheering did he have an opportunity to speak. From that hour his influence in the country was second only to that of the President, two or three members of his cabinet, and General Grant. Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mr. Beecher words of warmest gratitude and invited him to the White House. "Often and often," wrote Secretary Stanton, "in the dark hours you have come to me, and I have longed to hear your voice, feeling that above all other men you could cheer, strengthen, quiet and uplift me in this great battle, where by God's providence it has fallen upon me to hold a part, and perform a duty beyond my own strength." When therefore Lee surrendered, and the war came to a close, President Lincoln and the cabinet felt that Beecher's service to the cause of liberty had earned for him the most unique distinction granted to any man during the war. And so it came about that four years after Beauregard fired upon Fort Sumter, and the flag of the Union was lowered to give place to the flag of Secession, that not a general nor an admiral, but that a minister, Henry Ward Beecher, was selected to lift into its place again the old flag, that proclaimed to all the nations of the earth that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

X

HEROES OF BATTLE: AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

One of the wariest and most capable of the Confederate commanders was General Joseph E. Johnston. In his report of the battle of Kenesaw Mountain in Northwestern Georgia, in June, 1864, when Sherman had at last driven him to bay, he thus describes the attack and the repulse: "The Federal troops pressed forward with the resolution always displayed by the American soldier when properly led. After maintaining the contest for three-quarters of an hour, they retired unsuccessful, because they had encountered entrenched infantry, unsurpassed by that of Napoleon's Old Guard, or that which followed Wellington into France, out of Spain."

It would be difficult to find a more soldierly appreciation of both officers and men of those two American armies. And in a recent interesting book on Grant and Lee[2] is cited a remark of Charles Francis Adams when American Minister to Great Britain in the early years of our Civil War. Some one sarcastically asked him his opinion of the Confederate victories of that time. He quietly replied, "I think they have been won by my countrymen." In all those four strenuous years, heroic qualities--enterprise, resolution, valour, self-control, exercise of judgment amid dangers, endurance and fidelity in disaster--were plentifully developed throughout both parties of the then divided American people. The lonely picket-duty, the toilsome march, the endless duties of the soldier, were a constant drain upon enduring faithfulness, harder to bear, often, than the crashing excitement of the battle, while the deadly suffering of camp and hospital were at times easily worse than all.

Most fascinating the story of the leaders of the two armies. The career of two preëminent military leaders of the South, Lee and Jackson, has already been reviewed--cursorily, as must be the case in all the references to example--and we have noted them especially as to character. But it should be said further that in the opinion of military critics and soldiers, both American and foreign, Robert E. Lee was one of the most masterly strategists in warlike annals. In his defense of Richmond as the vital point of the Confederacy he did have the advantage of operating on interior lines; but when that is said all is said, for in numbers of men, equipment and military resources, he was always more meagrely supplied than his Federal opponents. His available means were mostly in his fertile brain, his prompt judgment, and his dauntless heart, together with the spirited support of his officers and the indomitable marching and fighting energy of his soldiers. The intense and tireless Jackson was indeed the chief's "right arm," and more than that, a keen intelligence, instant to see and seize the right way, and to follow it so swiftly that his rarely defeated infantry earned the proud nickname of "foot-cavalry."

Out of the many gallant officers of the Southern armies were some others whose names became familiar throughout the North. Among them were: Generals Pierre G. T. Beauregard, prominent in service from Bull Run to the end; the brilliant Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at Pittsburg Landing in 1862; J. E. B. Stuart, renowned as a fearless cavalry officer; James Longstreet, a leader of great distinction; the two Hills--Daniel H. and Ambrose P., both renowned fighters, the latter immortalized by Stonewall Jackson's last words, "A. P. Hill, prepare for action!" Another was Richard S. Ewell--not, like all the foregoing, a West Point graduate, with training and notable service in United States armies and wars, but, like many Federal generals, a volunteer, who achieved high rank by efficient activity.

In naval affairs, naturally, the South had little chance to show her mettle, having neither navy-yards nor navy, and all her ports being blockaded. The chief attempts on the water were the iron-plated ram _Merrimac_, commanded by Commodore Franklin Buchanan, which after sinking several wooden men-of-war in Hampton Roads was defeated by the new iron-turreted _Monitor_ under Lieutenant (later Admiral) John L. Worden; the iron-clad ram _Albemarle_, which damaged Northern shipping until blown up by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. Navy, in a daring personal adventure; and the British built, equipped and manned _Alabama_, under Commodore Raphael Semmes of the Confederacy, which destroyed millions of dollars in Northern ships on the high seas in 1862-1864, until sunk by the war-steamer _Kearsarge_ under Captain (later Admiral) John A. Winslow, off Cherbourg, in June, 1864.

The principal naval activities of the Federals during the war were in the reduction of fortified places on land in cooperation with the armies, and in blockading ports of the South to keep in their cotton and to keep out foreign supplies. One of the earliest feats was the effective use by Captain Andrew H. Foote in February, 1862, of the gunboats built in 1861 by Frémont for river warfare, when Foote daringly shelled Forts Donelson and Henry on the Cumberland River, enabling Grant to attack and summon them to "unconditional surrender." And on the long seaboard, the North soon had a line of battle-ships stretching from Cape Hatteras around to Florida, New Orleans and the further coast of Texas. Besides its few original war-ships, out of coasters, steamers and old junk the Navy Department constructed a fleet. But it was the man behind the gun who maintained the blockade, starved the Confederacy, and cleared the Mississippi River.

The story of men like Farragut and his boys is like a chapter out of a wonder book. In April, 1862, with a fleet of wooden frigates, mortar-schooners, and half-protected boats he entered the mouth of the Mississippi below New Orleans. The bottom of the river bristled with torpedoes--kegs filled with powder, and surrounded with long prongs that rested upon percussion caps. When a ship struck a prong it exploded the cap and the powder, and again and again a boat went to the bottom. The forts that protected the Mississippi thirty miles below the city were sheathed with sand bags, and mounted a hundred guns; while a boom of logs and chains crossed the river, and a fleet of fifteen vessels including an armed ram and a floating battery were there to dispute further progress. But Farragut lashed himself into the rigging of his flag-ship, and his fleet stormed the passage, raked with chains and shell. From the 18th to the 25th of April, a battle royal was waged with splendid valour on both sides; but the forts were passed, the boom was broken, the defensive fleet defeated, and Farragut had won New Orleans. Farragut, David D. Porter and other heroes had their full share of war and of glory not only here but later in Mobile Bay, and in 1863 with Grant and Sherman at Vicksburg, and at Port Hudson on the Mississippi, and Porter at Fort Fisher in December, 1864-January, 1865. Of absolute maritime warfare there was none, except Winslow's sinking of the _Alabama_, but in all the river and harbour fighting, against both fleets and forts, there was endless demand for intrepidity, ingenuity, large intelligence, and heroism--demands never failing of response.

The greatest soldiers of the North were McClellan, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan, and, towering above all, Grant. We may not linger in detail upon them all, and can but mention George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," stern as war, firm as granite, the bravest of knights; William T. Sherman, audacious, fertile, perhaps the most brilliant of them all; and Philip H. Sheridan, an organized thunder-storm, with the swiftness of the war eagle, impetuous, loving adventure, the idol of his men.

If at last Grant was the brain of the army, Sherman was, like Jackson to Lee, its "right arm." From the beginning of his military career, Sherman won the admiration and confidence of the government and the people of the North. He achieved honours at Vicksburg, and from that hour on to his victory at Atlanta and his march to the sea, his name and fame steadily increased. His victories were won, not only by enthusiasm and brilliancy, but by a mastery in advance of all the facts in the case. His knowledge was microscopic, to the last degree, as to the roads, bridges, and resources of the country through which he was marching. On approaching Atlanta he came to a region through which he had ridden on horseback twenty years before. That night in his tent, his guides, spies and advance scouts spread out their maps before Sherman, and to the astonishment of all, the soldier corrected and amplified them. It seemed that a score of years before he had formed the habit of making a detailed study of each region through which he travelled, and of working out campaigns of attack and defense. His old notes were so accurate as to prove the basis of an actual campaign for a great army. His contest with Johnston represented what has been called an inch by inch struggle, and although Sherman was victorious, when he passed away, the aged Southern soldier, Johnston, made the long journey to New York to act as pall-bearer and to testify to the splendid qualities of his great opponent.

It was Grant himself who called Sheridan "the left arm of the Union." By universal consent "little Phil" was the most brilliant campaigner of the group of soldiers of the first class. The story of his victory at Winchester captured the imagination of the North. The poem describing that achievement became the most popular poem of the year, and was recited by all the schoolboys on Friday afternoons, and quoted by all the politicians on the platform. The North had suffered so many defeats in the Shenandoah Valley that Sheridan's victory put new heart into the Union forces, and helped unite the Republican party, making certain the election of Lincoln.

Indeed, a great German soldier once expressed the judgment that Sheridan ranked not only with Grant, but with the greatest soldiers of all time.

The work of George H. McClellan was the work of the pioneer and pathfinder. It is one thing to take a sword, a Damascus blade, and use it in leadership, and quite another thing to take raw metal and on the anvil hammer out the blade for a hero's hand. McClellan made the sword; Grant used it. There is a pathetic passage in Dante's "Vita Nuova": "It is easier to sing a song than to create a harp." Dante meant that he had to create the Italian language before he could write the "Paradiso." Now McClellan's task was to create an army. He took a body of raw recruits and drilled them; he organized a system of supplies and built up a purchasing, transporting and storing department; he tested out all the guns, the cannons, powder and explosives; he compacted a body of engineers, weeding out poor ones and educating good ones; he took officers who at the beginning had their appointments through political influence and trained them until he had a body of men well knit together.

But McClellan had to contend with jealousy and insubordination. He was a commander early in the war, and he had competitors and detractors. It was charged against him that he was more anxious to make than to use a splendid army, and possibly his ideals of efficiency were too high for those early days. Yet "Little Mac" was idolized by his soldiers, with whom he fought and won bloody battles, and even the indeterminate ones are held in doubt as to his responsibility. Had Hooker obeyed his command, and crossed the bridge at Antietam and occupied the heights beyond, soldiers think to-day that Lee would have been crushed. Another fact was against him. The North was not ready to behold nor strong enough to endure the slaughter to which later on they became accustomed. After one of McClellan's first campaigns, Burnside wrote home that McClellan could have fought his way to Richmond, but it would have cost ten thousand men, and that would have been butchery. Later on, Grant, in a single brief campaign, lost twenty-five thousand men! But if Grant had suffered such losses in 1861 or 1862, he would have been dropped by Washington as unfitted for a military campaign.

History will rank Grant as the foremost soldier of the Republic. His story is full of romance. He was of Scotch Covenanter stock that settled in New England, and made its way to Ohio and Illinois. Like all the most successful generals on both sides in our Civil War, he was a graduate of West Point, showed talent in mathematics and engineering, and made an honourable name in the Mexican War. Scott praised him for his work as quartermaster and officer. The two maps that Grant made by questioning ranchmen and farmers as he went through Texas, and the information he collected from men who had been in and knew the roads and resources of Mexico, were later on invaluable. Grant was in every Mexican battle save one.

Fort Sumter fell on April 14, 1861. On the 15th Lincoln called for 75,000 troops. On the 19th Grant organized a little company in Springfield, Illinois. Two days later Governor Yates made him colonel. On the 31st of July he was in command at Mexico, Missouri. On the 7th of August his victory at Columbus won him the rank of brigadier-general. On the 10th of February, 1862, he was made major-general; on the 23d of March, 1864, he was made lieutenant-general of the armies of the United States. It was one long uninterrupted series of victories, for it has been said that it will never be known if Grant could conduct a retreat, because he never was defeated. From the beginning his supreme qualities as a military commander were fully evidenced.

Columbus was called the Gibraltar of the Mississippi. Halleck had ordered Grant to feel the strength of the enemy. But Grant was resourceful, fertile in expedients, a believer in offensive tactics. Hurling his forces upon Columbus, he won a signal victory. At Fort Donelson, Grant showed his iron endurance and untiring patience. When it came to the critical hour of the assault, a cold sleet-storm fell upon his army; the ground was a sheet of glass, the trees encased in ice. Grant himself spent half the night under a tree, standing upright, receiving reports and working out his plans. When a spy brought word that the Confederates had packed their knapsacks with three days' rations, Grant said: "They are preparing to retreat; we must assault the works," and, despite the storm, made an immediate attack. When Halleck received the news of the fall of Fort Donelson, in announcing the victory to Washington he did not even mention the name of Grant, but asked Lincoln to promote Smith, a subordinate commander.

Later, in 1863, after months of siege by river and by land, came the capture of Vicksburg, coincident with the Battle of Gettysburg, that was the high-water mark of the war. The announcement of these two victories, on July 4, 1863, intoxicated the North with joy.

By this time Grant's name was upon all lips, and he stood forth the one general fitted for command of all the armies--in the West, in the South, and on the Potomac. Just as some men have the gift of inventing, the gift of singing, the gift of carving, so Grant had the gift of strategy. One glance, and Grant had the whole situation in hand--the weak points to be attacked, the weak points of his own position to be safeguarded, the danger point for the enemy. Obedient himself, he expected instant obedience from others. Willing to risk his own life, he expected the same self-sacrifice on the part of his fellow officers. One biographer calls him "a master quartermaster," telling us that he knew how to feed and supply an army. Another calls Grant a great drillmaster, exhibiting him as the teacher of his own generals. Another terms Grant a natural engineer, with great gifts, but without detailed training. Another speaks of him as the greatest soldier in history in the way of attack. But when all these statements are combined, they tell us that Grant is the great, all-round soldier of the war, who by natural gifts and long experience could do many things, and all equally well. It is this that explains the tributes to his military genius by foreign soldiers, and the great masters of war in every land.

Grant's last campaign was against the capital of the Southern Confederacy, as the key to the Atlantic coast, for until Richmond should be taken and the Confederate government put to flight, the war would not be broken. Therefore Grant concentrated all his forces upon that:--"I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." In those awful campaigns Grant came to be called "the butcher," for he was as pitiless as fate, as unyielding as death. One outpost after another fell; one Southern regiment after another surrendered. Battles became mere slaughter-pits. Men went down like forest leaves; the army surgeons, at the spectacle, grew sick; it seemed more like murder than war. The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Chickahominy, Petersburg, were names to make one shudder. But Lee would not yield, and Grant had one watchword, "Unconditional surrender."

At last, without food, without equipment, without arms, Southern soldiers began to desert by thousands. Lee's army was reduced, his supplies were cut off, his retreat to the mountains and any chance of joining with Johnston from the Carolinas were blocked. Grant demanded surrender to save further bloodshed.

On the morning of April 9, 1865, Grant and Lee met in peace conference. Grant had on an old suit splashed with mud, and was without his sword; Lee wore a splendid new uniform that had just been sent by admirers in Baltimore. Lee asked upon what terms Grant would receive the surrender. Grant answered that officers and men "Shall not hereafter serve in the armies of the Confederate States or in any military capacity against the United States of America, or render aid to the enemies of the latter, until properly exchanged,"--all being then freed on parole. The horses of the cavalry were the property of the men. And Grant said: "I know that men--and indeed the whole South--are impoverished; I will instruct my officers to allow the men to retain their horses and take them home to work their little farms." Lee's final request was for rations for his starving men. Grant and Lee shook hands, after which the Virginian mounted his horse and rode off to his army. The Confederates met their beloved general with tumultuous shouts. With eyes swimming in tears, Lee said, in substance: "I have done what I thought to be best and what I thought was right; go back to your homes, conduct yourselves like good citizens and you will not be molested."

When certain Northern soldiers were preparing to fire salutes to celebrate the victory, Grant stopped the demonstration. "The best sign of rejoicing after victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field." All men in the North felt that the fall of Lee's army meant the fall of the Confederacy. Indeed, it did practically end the war. The final sheaf of victory is reaped when the commander, at the head of his troops, marches into the enemy's capital and makes the palace of his foe to shelter his own horses. The whole South expected Grant to lead his Army of the Potomac into Richmond. But Grant remembered Lee's sorrow, and had no desire for a dramatic triumph. He sent a subordinate to occupy Richmond, and quietly began the work of disbanding the army. Sending his regiments back to the fields and factories, he said, "Let us have peace." From that sentiment issued the new South and the new North.

But the man who had fought the war through to a successful issue became the most beloved man in the North, and soon the people bore him to the White House. The task was one for a giant. Four million slaves, newly emancipated, had to be cared for. Their fidelity to the families of their absent masters during the war was beautiful; while, towards the end of the strife, the enrollment and gallant fighting of 150,000 coloured men (Northern and Southern) in the Federal armies showed their manfulness. And now their Southern millions were free. They had the suffrage, but could not read the names of the men for whom they were voting. They were free men, but they had no land, no plough, no cabin, no anything. Pitiful their plight! In retrospect, no race has ever made such wonderful progress in fifty years. With President Eliot we may say that "their industrial achievements are the wonder of the world."

The second task that confronted President Grant was the reconstruction of the South. It was the era of the carpet-bagger. Northern regiments dwelt in Southern cities. Men were talking about hanging Jefferson Davis, and trying to decide whether or not the Confederate soldiers and officers should receive again the suffrage. Designing whites and ignorant coloured men gained control of legislatures. Corruption was rife. The whole South was prostrated. Ten thousand questions arose in Congress, bewildering, intricate, and the whole land was divided in opinion as to the proper courses. Finally, all the Confederate officers, saving perhaps Jefferson Davis alone, and some who refused to accept, received again their political rights at the hands of the magnanimous North. Slowly chaos became cosmos.

Scarcely less heavy were the financial troubles of Grant's administration. An era of war is an era of extravagance. When hard times came, men were tempted by the dreams of cheap money, and the greenback craze was abroad. But Grant stood for honest money, and attacked lying measures with the zeal of a Hebrew prophet.

After two presidential terms came two years of foreign travel (1877-79), and wherever the great soldier went he exhibited his confidence in democracy, his interest in the working people and the poor. He returned home to receive such an ovation as no American citizen has ever had. Six years of private life were followed by a financial disaster that threatened to destroy his good name itself. Grant was one who made ill-advised haste to become rich. Scandalized by the deceit and impoverished by the failure of men he had trusted as partners, the great soldier was now assaulted by worry and fear. Our best physicians believe that fear, whether related to property or the loss of name, or grievous disappointment, is in some way related to cancer. And within a few months after that awful wreckage, Grant knew that his life was coming to an end.

The soldier became an author. Stricken with death, in the hope of safeguarding his family against poverty Grant decided to write his memoirs. It was an astonishing literary achievement. His style is simple as sunshine. Grant knew what he wanted to say, said it, and had done. Yet all the time a shadow was falling upon the page,--the shadow made by the messenger of death, who stood by Grant's shoulder, ready to claim his own. Slowly the soldier wrote the story of his youth, his campaigns in the West, his battles in the Wilderness, while every day the hand grew feebler.

Reared in a religious atmosphere, Grant's nature was essentially moral and religious. He possessed all the big essential virtues--honesty, justice, truth, honour, good will. He loved the truth. He felt that he had done what he could. Southern soldiers and generals as well as Northern comrades and friends brought to his bedside messages of affection and good cheer. At length he fell asleep. His tomb on the height above the Hudson has become a Mecca for innumerable multitudes.

To the end of time, perhaps, Lincoln will be remembered as the Martyr President, the best loved of all our leaders, the great Emancipator, the gentlest memory of our world; but side by side with Lincoln will stand Grant, the man of oak and rock, the man of iron will, who fought the war to a successful issue, and will be known in history as the greatest soldier of the Republic.

XI

THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE AT HOME WHO SUPPORTED THE SOLDIERS AT THE FRONT

It is a proverb that nothing moves men like tales of eloquence and heroism. Historians and poets alike believe that stories of bravery and anecdotes of heroes exert a profound influence upon young hearts. Here is Socrates. His judges condemn him to the jail and poison. Socrates quails not, and says: "At what price would one not estimate one night of noble conference with Homer and Hesiod? You, my judges, go home to your banquets--I to hemlock and death; but whether it is better for you than for me, God knoweth." It is a moving story. Here is the early missionary martyr, fettered and brought before a cruel tyrant, to be condemned to death. The missionary lifts his chains, calls the roll of the king's crimes, flashes the sword of justice, coerces the monarch from his throne, makes him crawl, beg, plead, and beseech the missionary's pity and prayers, for speech has made a prisoner king, and turned a monarch into a captive. It is a moving tale. And here are the stories of war: Xenophon's ten thousand young Greeks, lost in the heart of the great nation, a thousand miles from home, without maps, without food, outnumbered daily ten to one, living off the country, fighting all day, surrounded by a fresh army each night, steadily pursuing their famous retreat. See, too, the handful at Thermopylæ, defending the Pass, and every one of them giving his life. And here are the Dutch, driven by the Bloody Alva into the North Sea, clinging to the dykes by their finger-tips, and fighting their way back to their homes and altars. And here are the American boys confined to the prison ship, the _Jersey_, starved victims of scurvy and fever, without food, without medicine, with the corpses of their brothers floating in the water just outside, boys whose monument stands yonder in Fort Greene. What a tale of martyrdom is theirs!

Yet the history of heroism holds no more thrilling story than that of the soldiers of our Civil War. Every other passage, every other incident, that we have passed in review can be more than duplicated by soldier boys who have lent new meaning to patriotism and martyrdom. As many men died in Southern prisons as fell on both sides at the battle of Gettysburg. This is their story--they counted life not dear unto themselves; they struggled unto blood, striving against oppression, and the world itself, with all its beauty, was not worthy of them.

Our prosperous generation, threatened with effeminacy and softness, needs to re-open the pages of history and to linger long upon the portraits of our heroic leaders. Theirs was the greatest war that ever shook the earth. A million Northern men, and over against them a million Southern men, and a battle line a thousand miles in length! Including the long-term men and the short-term service, 3,000,000 men engaged in the conflict! Two thousand two hundred and sixty-one battles fought--if we mention conflicts in which there were more than five hundred engaged on each side. When Lee surrendered, his land was desolate. Armies upon armies of cripples came home to suffer! There were a million widows and over three million orphan children! Men who at Lincoln's call for troops left the college and the university discovered, when it was all over, that it was too late to take up their studies, and lived on like unfulfilled prophecies. Others, who during those four years poured out all the vital nerve forces, brought so little strength out of the long, bitter struggle that they might better have died, and for years have been in the invalid's chair, looking with wistful eyes on the great procession of society moving on to industrial victories! The war all over? The war has been continued in its influences throughout the entire generation! It never will be over until the last cripple has dropped his maimed body, until the last child, robbed of a dead father's care, has recovered his losses, and the last woman who has lived alone through the years has found her beloved!

The courage and endurance of the Southern women, who took full charge of the cotton plantations and helped support Lee's army, stirs the sense of wonder. There were many Northern women who had no relatives at the front, but there was scarcely a Southern home where the father, husband or sons were not on the battle line. For that reason the Southern women were always in a state of suspense. Homes were entirely broken up during the four years. The men were at the front, and all the women were either at work at home or were in the hospitals as nurses. During 1862 and 1863 practically every church in Richmond was a hospital, and there were twenty-five other buildings used by surgeons. Physicians had no morphine and no quinine. For coffee they used parched corn. Tea rose to $500 a pound. For sugar they steeped watermelon rind. For soda these women burned corncobs and mixed the ashes with their corn-meal. They had neither ice nor salt. They tore up their ingrain carpets to make trousers for the soldiers. Women wore coarse hemp and calico. Having no leather, one little factory turned out five hundred pairs of wooden shoes a month in Richmond.

When Lee needed bullets, a minister tore the lead pipe out of his house in Richmond to send the lead to Lee. Flour rose to $400 a barrel. In one little town iron became so scarce that tenpenny nails were used for money. No tale more pitiful than that of the women who took charge of the slaves on the plantation, comforted their little children, buried their dead, smiled, wept, prayed, worked, compelled their lips to silence, staggered on, groaned inly while they taught men peace, and died while others were smiling. Whether or not men are made in the image of God, these women certainly were. And it was because they believed with all their mind and soul that independence for the State was the sovereign gift of God; and they died for independence, just as the boys in blue lived and died for the Union.

It was this moral earnestness and intensity of conviction that made the war so terrible. When England hired Hessians to fight Washington's troops, and they fought for so much a week, the hired soldiers were slow to begin attack and quick to retreat. Mercenaries have to be scourged into battle. Stonewall Jackson's men believed in their cause and thirsted for the excitement of the attack and onslaught. And yet all the time the two opposing armies maintained mutual respect and even developed a new sense of brotherhood as the desperate struggle went on. Never was there a war carried on with such intensity by day and such a sense of mutual respect at night. Once when the Rappahannock separated the two armies, and it was evident that there was no campaign beyond, a revival broke out in one of Stonewall Jackson's regiments and there were prayer-meetings in almost every tent every night. Becoming acquainted, a number of boys in blue by previous arrangement crossed the river, and knelt in the prayer service. One night the sound of the regiments singing, "Nearer My God to Thee," rolled through the air across the river, and finally the boys in the Northern army joined in, until at the last verse, the two regiments, opposed in arms, were one in voice and heart, as they poured out their souls to God in the old hymn they had learned at their mother's knee. For the soldier knew that any moment a shot might bring the end.

The sufferings of men in prisons touch the note of horror. The national government is planning a monument for those who died in Andersonville. Gettysburg slew 26,000, Andersonville 32,000. The stockade included twenty-six acres, but three acres were marsh. Incredible as it may seem, there was no shelter, no beds, no cook-house, no hospital, no nothing. Just the cold rain in winter chilling men to death, just the pitiless glare of the August sun scorching them to death. There was no sanitation, and when it rained the little stream backed up the sewage, and after each shower men died by scores. Wirtz wrote Jefferson Davis that one-fifth of the meal was bran, and that he had no meat, no medicine, no clothing. Men burrowed in the ground, dug caves like rats, and not infrequently fifty bodies were carried out in a single day. Wirtz destroyed men faster than did General Lee. The men imprisoned in Andersonville urge that there were thousands of cords of wood just outside the stockade, miles upon miles of forests all about, that the prisoners could have built their own shanties and hospitals, and cookhouses. To which Wirtz's friends answer that he did not have weapons or Confederate soldiers enough to guard the prisoners on parole. While they also answer that the prisoners in Andersonville had as much food and the same kind as Lee's army was then enjoying. The plain fact is that the South was out of medicine, clothing and food, and was itself on the edge of starvation.

The wonderful thing is that these Union boys, 32,000 of them, who died at Andersonville, could at any moment have obtained release by taking the oath not to renew arms against the South. Some few did escape by digging under the stockade--but what perils they endured to escape from the enemy's country! They slept in leaves by day, and travelled by night. They were pursued by bloodhounds, lay in water and swamps, with only their lips above the filth until the peril had passed by. They wore rags, ate roots, shivered in the rains, sweltered in the heat, grew more emaciated, until more dead than alive they reached the Northern lines.

Now that it is all over, Confederate soldiers like General John B. Gordon have said on a hundred lecture platforms in Northern cities that, having done what he could for States' rights and to destroy the Union, he thanked God above all things else that he was not successful. In the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, that great Southern soldier wrote the last words of his life, in the hope that they would help cement the Union between the North and the South:--"The issues that divided the sections were born when the Republic was born, and were forever buried in an ocean of fraternal blood. We shall then see that, under God's providence, every sheet of flame from the blazing rifles of the contending armies, every whizzing shell that tore through the forests at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, every cannon shot that shook Chickamauga's hills or thundered around the heights of Gettysburg, and all the blood and the tears that were shed are yet to become contributions for the upbuilding of American manhood and for the future defense of American freedom. The Christian Church received its baptism of pentecostal power as it emerged from the shadows of Calvary, and went forth to its world-wide work with greater unity and a diviner purpose. So the Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity."

Nor must we forget the work of nurses, the members of the Sanitary Commission, and the Christian Commission Movement. The events of the Russian-Japanese war show what is a wonderful progress of science. Japan sent along with her army experts on the water, the food, and the placing of tents, that made typhoid, cholera and the usual diseases impossible. Her surgeons used antiseptic methods, and gangrene was practically unknown in the Japanese hospitals. But the situation was different in 1861. Modern sanitation, surgery, antiseptic methods, chloroform and ether are comparatively recent discoveries. Such anesthetics as the surgeons had were poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. In the camps fever was prevalent. Smallpox, measles and lesser diseases became malignant and wrought terrible ravages. Tents became more dangerous than battle-fields. What the bullet began, the hospitals completed. More men died through disease than through leaden hail. But the noble army of physicians and nurses wrought wonders. Think of it! Twenty-six thousand men dead or dying on the field of Gettysburg!

Here is a page torn from the journal of one of the nurses there: "We begin the day with the wounded and sick by washing and freshening them. Then the surgeons and dressers make their rounds, open the wounds, apply the remedies and replace the bandages. This is the awful hour. I put my fingers in my ears this morning. When it is over we go back to the men and put the ward in order once more, remaking the beds and giving clean handkerchiefs with a little cologne or bay water upon them, so prized in the sickening atmosphere of wounds. Then we keep going round and round, wetting the bandages, going from cot to cot almost without stopping, giving medicine and brandy according to orders. I am astonished at the whole-souled and whole-bodied devotion of the surgeons. Men in every condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, are brought in on stretchers and dumped down anywhere." Men shattered in the thigh, and even cases of amputation were shovelled into berths without blanket, without thought or mercy. It could not have been otherwise. Other hundreds and thousands were out on the field of Gettysburg bleeding to death, and every minute was precious.

No page can ever describe the service of nurses, sisters of mercy, chaplains, brave men and kind women, who took train and went to the front upon news of the battle and remained there for weeks.

But while the soldier boys were striving unto blood for their convictions, what about the people at home who loved them? How did they carry their burdens and fulfill their task that was not less important? Fortunately, during the war, the North was blessed with four bountiful harvests that were rich enough, not only to support the people at home, and the soldiers at the front, but also to furnish an excess of food that could be sold abroad to obtain money with which to help support the war. It seemed as if the sun, the rain, and the soil had entered into a conspiracy to support the North and liberty. The largest crop of wheat and corn ever garnered before the war was in 1859. At that time, men thought the harvest would never be surpassed. But strangely enough, that bumper crop of 1859 was surpassed four times in succession during the Civil War. Meanwhile the herds of cattle and the flocks of sheep more than doubled during the conflict, and all of the land that was not yellow with grain became a rich pasture and meadow, covered with cattle, sheep and horses.

Even the losses of sugar and cotton usually purchased from the South were made up to the North. Threatened with the loss of the Southern sugar, sorghum cane was imported from China, and the people scarcely missed the Southern sugar. When the cotton failed, the unwonted increase of the flocks furnished wool for raiment. It stirs wonder to reflect that one poor crop of wheat and corn might have changed the issue, and defeated the North. Singularly enough also, the failure of crops in Europe not only offered a market for the unexpected Northern surplus, but yielded the highest price ever known, thus bringing in a golden river to enrich the Northern people. Jefferson Davis had said at the beginning of the war that "grass would soon be growing not simply in the streets of the villages of the North, but in Broadway and Wall Street." Davis believed that the withdrawal of every fourth man would make our problem of food and clothing impossible of solution. But at that moment the invention of the reaper enabled one harvester to do the work of ten men, and the new tools actually more than took the place of the Northern soldiers who were at the front.

Furthermore, the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice descended upon the Northern women. On the little farms where the farmer's wife was too poor to buy a reaper, the mother and the daughters went into the field to plough the corn and thrash the wheat and milk the cows. In many counties in Iowa and Kansas one-half of the men were at the front, and in harvest time it is said that there were more women working in the wheat and corn fields than men.

One other element fought for liberty and the North. A strange unrest fell upon Europe. Foreign peoples became discontented and began to migrate. In the summer of 1862 a vast multitude landed upon the shores in New York, at the very time when there was a scarcity of labour in the shops and factories. At the very hour when Lincoln was afraid that it might become impossible to clothe the army and equip it, the providence of God raised up foreigners who stepped into the place made vacant by the newly enlisted soldier; thereafter the North throughout the war actually increased in population, in wealth, in manufacturing interests. The Civil War ended with the North richer and more prosperous than when it began; while in 1861 slavery had impoverished the South, and war left the Confederacy crushed to the very earth, peeled and stripped, famished and utterly broken. For the South never yielded until she had cast in the last earthly possession, and knew that only life and breath were left.