Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/186

 CHAPTER V

HE peace which followed the surrender of the Confederate armies in April, 1865, was by no means unclouded. Indeed, it was not to be expected that the passionate antagonisms which for four years had arrayed the North and the South against one another in bloody conflict, would at once yield to a revival of common national feeling and mutual affection. The wounds the Civil War had inflicted upon each were still too fresh. The Southern soldier went home bowed down by the mortification of defeat, ragged, emaciated, and foot-sore, to find his home, maybe, in ruins, his family on the edge of starvation, his country partly devastated and all fearfully impoverished, his people painfully wrestling with the bewildering problem of providing for the coming day. With sullen fierceness the wrath of the Southern heart would, now and then, privately break out at the “ruthless invasion” of the Southern soil by “cruel hordes of Northern hirelings.” Meanwhile there was much jubilation at the North over the restored Union. The longed-for day when “Johnny would come home” had at last arrived. One after another the regiments of bronzed veterans, flushed with triumph, returned to the places from which they had gone forth. They were received with joyous demonstrations of welcome and speedily put to work by the activities of a prosperous country. The stories of the dangers they had braved, the valorous deeds they had done, and the victories they had achieved, imparted to every social gathering a tone of glorification. But, after all, very many of the “Johnnies” who had gone to the war, had not come home. There was a