The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864 | Page 7

We proved
the redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to be as bright as ever.
I know we hear men talk of the demoralization produced by war. There
is a great deal they can say eloquently on that side. Drunkenness,
licentiousness, lawlessness, they say are produced by it, already to an
extent fearful to consider. And scoundrels are using the land's
necessities for their own selfish purposes, and fattening on its blood.
These things are all true, and a great deal more of the same sort beside.
And it may be well at times, with good purpose, to consider them. But
it is not well to consider them alone, and speak of them as the only
moral results of the war. No! by the ten thousands who have died for

the grand idea of National Unity, by the unselfish heroes who have
thrown themselves, a living wall, before the parricidal hands of traitors,
who have perished that the land they loved beyond life might not perish,
by the example and the memory they have left in ten thousand homes,
which their death has consecrated for the nation's reverence by their
lives and deaths, we protest against the one-sided view that looks only
on the moral evil of the struggle!
The truth is, there are war vices and war virtues. There are peace vices
and there are peace virtues. Decorous quiet, orderly habits, sober
conduct, attention to business, these are the good things demanded by
society in peace. And they may consist with meanness, selfishness,
cowardice, and utter unmanliness. The round-stomached, prosperous
man, with his ships, shops, and factories, is very anxious for the
cultivation of these virtues. He does not like to be disturbed o' nights.
He wants his street to be quiet and orderly. He wants to be left
undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue
by the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a
nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence,
hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all
high purposes, spiritual coma and deadness, these do not disturb him.
They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the
way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be
sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh
expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things.
But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is
only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. He is just
the man to tell us all about the demoralization of war.
Now quietness and good order, sober, discreet, self-seeking, decorous
epicureanism and the rest, are not precisely the virtues that will save a
people. There are certain old foundation virtues of another kind, which
are the only safe substratum for national or personal salvation. These
are courage--hard, muscular, manly courage--fortitude, patience,
obedience to discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, veracity of purpose,
and such like. These rough old virtues must lie at the base of all right
character. You may add, as ornaments to your edifice, as frieze,

cornices, and capitals to the pillars, refinements, and courtesies, and
gentleness, and so on. But the foundation must rest on the rude granite
blocks we have mentioned, or your gingerbread erection will go down
in the first storm.
And the simple fact is that peace has a tendency to eat out just these
foundation virtues. They are war virtues; just the things called out by a
life-and-death battle for some good cause. In these virtues we claim the
land has grown. The national character has deepened and intensified in
these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations of a nation's
greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to toil and
weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth,
and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for
selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and
have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain
as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne it with a
fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over all, the
flaming light of a worthy cause that men might worthily live for and
worthily die for, has led the thousands of the land out of their narrow
lives, and low endeavors, to the clear mountain heights of sacrifice! We
stand now, a courageous, patient, steadfast, unselfish people before all
the world. We stand, a people that has taken its life in its hand for a
purely unselfish cause. We have won our place in the foremost rank of
nations, not on our wealth, our numbers, or our prosperity,