Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/235

 Permit me to remind you that as an honorable death in an individual is preferable to an ignoble life, so in nations we find that war is the foundation of many of the high virtues and faculties of men; while nations that practice too long the arts of peace become enfeebled and oftentimes corrupt. Peace and the virtues of civil life do not always flourish together. We, too, often find peace and selfishness; peace and corruption; peace and death. It can be clearly shown that the heroic periods in the world's history have been the fruits of war. We point you to Rome and Athens, in ancient times; to France, England and America in modern. What were the compensations to us of our own War Between the States?

It helped to educate a body of citizen soldiery, who were to teach mankind a needed lesson, that human endurance could equal human misfortune. Our people were thoroughly aroused and rushed into the army from all ranks of society. They were citizen soldiers; homogenious, united, patriotic to a degree. The army contained every class of believers, from the bishop to the neophite—students of divinity—Sunday School teachers, deacons, vestrymen, class leaders, exhorters, men from all denominations of Christians in the land. This constituted a tremendous moral force, supplying men brave enough to face the dangers nature shrinks from, and humane enough to treat with courtesy and kindness any foe temporarily in their power.

To the citizen of the Old World our conflict was a subject of intense interest and wonder. The transformation of citizens into soldiers surprised, if it did not alarm them. The skill displayed in the preparation of war material, the revolutionizing of naval warfare in Hampton Roads, the steady valor of many battlefields, convinced them that the American soldier of twelve months was not inferior to the European soldier of twelve years. The atrocities of one side shocked them immensely, while the patient endurance of hardship, and all manner of provocation by a people whom they had been taught to look upon as tyrannical and effeminate, by reasons of their peculiar institutions, filled them with the greatest admiration.

A leading public journal of the world thus describes the