Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/53

CIVIL WARS land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.'"

Lincoln too found a text for an answer when he was asked about the punishment of the rebels: it was David's answer, "What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? Shall there be any man put to death this day in Israel?" (2 Samuel xix. 22).

Any comparison must also take into account the difference in the duration of the two contests. In America the Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865 and was never renewed. In England there were two Civil Wars, one lasting from 1642 to 1646, the other from 1648 to 1651. In America the defeated party accepted the result of the war as final: in England they took up arms again and called in the Scots to aid them. After our first Civil War no man suffered on the scaffold for his part in it: the officers of the army were eager for a reconciliation and were disposed to grant the defeated 45