One side is not braver than the other. Bullets fly, and men get swept away. They rush into the thick of fighting, and ‘kill’ is written on every face. In a battle the commander who has more men—not afraid to die–drives his opponent off the field and declares a victory.

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born infant, died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

They say it was a shocking sight,
After the field was won,
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

The destiny of the land, the nation, the South, the State, the County, was already whirling into the plunge of its precipice, not that the State and the South knew it, because the first seconds of fall always seem like soar.