The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6,
No 4,
by Various

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August, 1864, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864 Devoted
To Literature And National Policy
Author: Various
Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23537]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. VI.--OCTOBER, 1864.--No. IV.

SOME USES OF A CIVIL WAR.
War is a great evil. We may confess that, at the start. The Peace Society
has the argument its own way. The bloody field, the mangled dying,
hoof-trampled into the reeking sod, the groans, and cries, and curses,
the wrath, and hate, and madness, the horror and the hell of a great
battle, are things no rhetoric can ever make lovely.
The poet may weave his wreath of victory for the conqueror; the
historian, with all the pomp of splendid imagery, may describe the
heroism of the day of slaughter; but, after all, and none know this better
than the men most familiar with it, a great battle is the most hateful and
hellish sight that the sun looks on in all his courses.
And the actual battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the field
of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the actual
sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes
sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household
fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers
weep for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a
thousand roofs--cottage roofs and palace roofs--little children ask for
'father.' The pattering feet shall never run to meet, upon the threshold,
his feet, who lies stiffening in the bloody trench far away!
There are added horrors in civil war. These forms, crushed and torn out

of all human semblance, are our brothers. These wailing widows, these
small fatherless ones speak our mother language, utter their pain in the
tongue of our own wives and children. Victory seems barely better than
defeat, when it is victory over our own blood. The scars we carve with
steel or burn with powder across the shuddering land, are scars on the
dear face of the Motherland we love. These blackened roof-trees, they
are the homes of our kindred. These cities, where shells are bursting
through crumbling wall and flaming spire, they are cities of our own
fair land, perhaps the brightest jewels in her crown.
Ay! men do well to pray for peace! With suppliant palms outstretched
to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give
peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow.
Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating flocks
whiten all the uplands. Let harvest hymns be sung, while groaning
wagons drag to bursting barns their mighty weight of sheaves. Let mill
wheels turn their dripping rounds by every stream. Let sails whiten
along every river. Let the smoke of a million peaceful hearths rise like
incense in the morning. Let the shouts of happy children, at their play,
ring down ten thousand valleys in the summer day's decline. Over all
the blessed land, asleep beneath the shadow of the Almighty hand, let
the peace of God rest in benediction! 'Give peace in our time, O Lord!'
And yet the final clause to, every human prayer must be 'Thy will be
done!' There are things better far than peace. There are things more
loathely and more terrible than, the horror of battle and 'garments rolled
in blood.' Peace is blessed, but if you have peace with hell, how about
the blessedness? A covenant with evil is not the sort of agreement that
will bring comfort. A truce with Satan is not the thing that it will do to
trust. There are things in this world, without which the prayer for peace
is 'a witch's prayer,' read backward to a curse.
That is to say, whether peace is good depends entirely on the further
question, With whom are you at peace? Whether war is evil depends on
the other question, With whom are you at war? In one most