Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/183

 right, and justice. And this is not a matter of physical courage. It is the moral heroism most needed in a republic.

Although I had resigned my commission and was no longer in the service, I could not abstain from going to Washington to witness the great parade of the two armies, the Eastern and the Western, previous to their final dissolution, and to press the hands of my old companions in arms once more. My experiences during the conflict, and sober reflections thereon, had developed in me a profound abhorrence of war as such. But I must confess, when I saw those valiant hosts swinging in broad fronted column down Pennsylvania Avenue, the Army of the Potomac one day, and the next day Sherman's army of bronzed veterans—the men nothing but bone and muscle and skin—their tattered battle-flags fluttering victoriously over their heads in the full pride of achievement, my heart leaped in the consciousness of having been one of them. It was a spectacle splendid and imposing beyond description. But was not that which followed a spectacle far grander and more splendid in its significance—the sudden dispersion of these mighty hosts, which looked, and felt, as if they might defy the world, but which, after four years of most bloody and destructive fighting, melted away all at once, as if they had never existed—every man that had wielded the sword or the musket or served the cannon in terrible conflict, going quietly home to his plow, or his anvil, or his loom, or his counting-room, as a peaceable citizen? That this transition from the conditions of war to those of peace, this transformation of a million soldiers into a million citizen-workers, could be accomplished so suddenly, without the slightest disturbance, even without any apprehension of difficulty, was in its way a greater triumph of the American democracy than any victory won on the battlefield.