g on can end without some
radical change in the system of African slavery. Whether it be doomed
to a sudden extinction, or to a gradual abolition through economical
causes, this war will not leave it where it was before. As a power in
the state, its reign is already over. The fiery tongues of the
batteries in Charleston harbor accomplished in one day a conversion
which the constancy of Garrison and the eloquence of Phillips had
failed to bring about in thirty years. And whatever other result this
war is destined to produce, it has already won for us a blessing worth
everything to us as a nation in emancipating the public opinion of the
North.

GENERAL McCLELLAN'S REPORT

1864

We can conceive of no object capable of rousing deeper sympathy than a
defeated commander. Though the first movement of popular feeling may be
one of wrathful injustice, yet, when the ebb of depression has once
fairly run out, and confidence begins to set back, hiding again that
muddy bed of human nature which such neap-tides are apt to lay bare,
there is a kindly instinct which leads all generous minds to seek every
possible ground of extenuation, to look for excuses in misfortune
rather than incapacity, and to allow personal gallantry to make up, as
far as may be, for want of military genius. There is no other kind of
failure which comes so directly home to us, none which appeals to so
many of the most deeply rooted sentiments at once. Want of success in
any other shape is comparatively a personal misfortune to the man
himself who fails; but how many hopes, prides, sacrifices, and heroisms
are centred in him who wields the embattled manhood of his country! An
army is too multitudinous to call forth that personal enthusiasm which
is a necessity of the heart. The imagination needs a single figure
which it can invest with all those attributes of admiration that become
vague and pointless when divided among a host. Accordingly, we
impersonate in the general, not only the army he leads, but whatever
qualities we are proud of in the nation itself. He becomes for the
moment the ideal of all masculine virtues, and the people are eager to
lavish their admiration on him. His position gives him at a bound what
other men must spend their lives in winning or vainly striving to win.
If he gain a battle, he flatters that pride of prowess which, though it
may be a fault of character in the individual man, is the noblest of
passions in a people. If h