stricken through the
war, but practically every Southern home had lost one or two members of
the family, through father, son or brother.

Nor must we forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead
of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old
homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was
the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had
become a wilderness, the plantation a desolation, and where there had
been prosperity and even luxury, famine and want and disease had set up
their abiding places. Verily secession sowed the wind and reaped the
whirlwind of destruction.

That the war influenced some people for good and influenced others for
evil is beyond all doubt. During the first two years it was a distinct
tonic to the intellect and conscience of the people. The sense of
national peril quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied the weak
drifters, furnished ballast to all the people, made the strong stronger,
made the brave more heroic. The first sign of national decay is the note
of frivolity. The sure sign of greatness in a generation is the note of
seriousness. In the middle of 1863 James Russell Lowell wrote Bancroft
that the war had been a great, a divine and a wholly unmixed blessing,
and that all of the people were exalted to new levels. Had the war
ceased with the battle of Gettysburg, probably Lowell's statement would
have held true, but later came the reaction towards graft and
corruption, intemperance, profligacy and gambling. Within four years the
representatives of the government expended from seven to eight billions
of dollars. Government contractors bought at a single time 50,000 suits
of clothes, 100,000 rifles, 200,000 blankets. The temptation to graft
was strong for all and irresistible to a few. The government records
speak of one horse-trader in St. Louis who bought his horses and mules
at $75 and sold them to the government for $150, and made enough to buy
Mississippi steamboats for $65,000. He then rented these boats to the
government for one year for $295,000, and at the end of the year still
owned the boats. To what extent charges of graft were made is indicated
by the fact that one claim was reduced from fifty millions to
thirty-three millions. A cartoon of that time with strange exaggeration
represents one man saying to his friend, "So-and-so has obtained a third
contract from the government." To which his friend a