FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>  
writer's mind. After consideration, it is allowed to remain. Few need be reminded that, by the less intelligent classes of the South, Abraham Lincoln, by nature the most kindly of men, was regarded as a monster wantonly warring upon liberty. He stood for the personification of tyrannic power. Each Union soldier was called a Lincolnite. Undoubtedly Sherman, in the desolation he inflicted after leaving Atlanta, acted not in contravention of orders; and all, in a military point of view, if by military judged deemed to have been expedient, and nothing can abate General Sherman's shining renown; his claims to it rest on no single campaign. Still, there are those who can not but contrast some of the scenes enacted in Georgia and the Carolinas, and also in the Shenandoah, with a circumstance in a great Civil War of heathen antiquity. Plutarch relates that in a military council held by Pompey and the chiefs of that party which stood for the Commonwealth, it was decided that under no plea should any city be sacked that was subject to the people of Rome. There was this difference, however, between the Roman civil conflict and the American one. The war of Pompey and Caesar divided the Roman people promiscuously; that of the North and South ran a frontier line between what for the time were distinct communities or nations. In this circumstance, possibly, and some others, may be found both the cause and the justification of some of the sweeping measures adopted. 15. At this period of excitement the thought was by some passionately welcomed that the Presidential successor had been raised up by heaven to wreak vengeance on the South. The idea originated in the remembrance that Andrew Johnson by birth belonged to that class of Southern whites who never cherished love for the dominant: that he was a citizen of Tennessee, where the contest at times and in places had been close and bitter as a Middle-Age feud; the himself and family had been hardly treated by the Secessionists. But the expectations build hereon (if, indeed, ever soberly entertained), happily for the country, have not been verified. Likely the feeling which would have held the entire South chargeable with the crime of one exceptional assassin, this too has died away with the natural excitement of the hour. 16. The incident on which this piece is based is narrated in a newspaper account of the battle to be found in the "Rebellion Record." During the disaster to
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>  



Top keywords:

military

 

circumstance

 

Pompey

 
excitement
 
people
 

Sherman

 
exceptional
 

passionately

 

welcomed

 

Presidential


Andrew
 

thought

 

period

 

During

 

incident

 
successor
 

Record

 

vengeance

 

originated

 
Rebellion

chargeable

 
raised
 

heaven

 

remembrance

 

measures

 

disaster

 

nations

 
communities
 

distinct

 

justification


sweeping

 

natural

 

assassin

 

possibly

 

adopted

 

narrated

 

family

 

treated

 

Secessionists

 

newspaper


Middle

 

account

 

expectations

 

entertained

 

soberly

 

happily

 
country
 

verified

 

hereon

 

feeling