Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/180

 By the way, it is a curious fact that in the South, General Sherman himself is still to this day held responsible for all the mischief connected with his famous march. The most ludicrously extravagant stories about his personal conduct are still current there. A Southern lady, a friend much cherished by my family for her character and intelligence, quite seriously told me that General Sherman had himself brought with him from the South over two hundred gold watches. I tried in vain to convince her that the story could not possibly be true. She simply insisted that she knew it was true, that it was very well known down South, and that the proof of it was in the State Department at Washington.

The sayings of such a man as General Sherman on the effect of war upon the morals of the soldiers themselves may be commended to the sober contemplation of those who so glibly speak of war as a great moral agency—how war kindles in the popular heart the noblest instincts and emotions of human nature; how it lifts a people above the mean selfishness of daily life; how it stops the growth of the “vile, groveling materialism” which is so apt to develop into a dominant tendency in a long period of peace; how it turns the ambitions of men into channels of generous enthusiasm and lofty aspirations; and how it is simply a bath of fire from which human society issues cleansed of its dross of low propensities, refreshed in its best energies, and more ardent than ever in devoted pursuit of its highest ideals.

It will, indeed, not be denied that at the beginning of our Civil War there were magnificent demonstrations of enthusiastic and self-sacrificing patriotism on the part of the people, that the war itself abounds with heroic acts, and that it produced the great results of a saved and strengthened Union, the abolition of slavery, and an invigorated consciousness of