Tolstoi in literature and Verestchagin in art give us
glimpses of the grim reality.

An industry which has murder for its main output will have some
by-products to match. In the armies of both sides the human stuff was of
mixed character and motive. Some enlisted from pure patriotism,--for
Union, State, or Confederacy; some from thirst of adventure; others for
ambition; others for the bounty or under compulsion of the conscription
officer; many from the mere contagious excitement. Army life always
brings to many of its participants a great demoralization. Take away the
restriction of public opinion in a well-ordered community, take from men
the society of good women, and there will be a tendency to barbarism. A
civilized army has indeed a code and public opinion of its own, which
counts for some sterling qualities, but it is lax and ineffective for
much that goes to complete manhood. Just as the war left a host of
maimed and crippled, so it left a multitude of moral cripples. At the
reunion, around the "camp fire," with the reminiscences of stirring
times and the renewal of good comradeship runs a vein of comment which
the newspapers do not relate. "What's become of A.?" "Drank himself to
death." "And where is X.?" "Never got back the character he lost in New
Orleans,--went to the dogs." It is a chronicle not recorded on the
monuments, but remembered in many a blighted household. The financial
debt the war left behind it was not the heaviest part of the after-cost.

Nor must there be forgotten the temper which war begets, of mutual hate
between whole peoples. Forty years later we bring ourselves,--some of
us, and in a measure,--to see that our opponents of either side had some
justification or some excuse; that they perhaps were honest as we. But
little room was there for such mutual forbearance of judgment while the
fight was on. For the average man, for most men, to fight means also to
hate. While the contest lasted, Northerners habitually spoke of their
foes as "the rebels,"--not in contumely, but as matter-of-fact
description. They were "rebels" in common speech, and when one warmed a
little they were "traitors." Good men said that now for the first time
they saw why the imprecatory Psalms were written,--theirs was the only
cursing strong enough for the country's enemies. Quite as hearty was the
South's detestation of the Yankee invaders and despots,--the fanatics
and their hired minions. The Southern feeling took