thful men for whom he
gave his life.

All the energies of the North were at the highest stretch. In those
whose hearts were in the strife, at home or in the field, there was a
great glow and elation. The intensity of the time communicated itself to
industry and trade. There was an almost feverish activity; with heavy
taxation and a fluctuating currency--gold was long at a premium of
250--mills and markets and stores were in full tide of operation. The
North matched the South in personal courage and generalship; and greatly
outweighed it in numbers, material, and in the productivity engendered
in a free, urban, industrial society. The passion of the war touched
everything. The churches were strongholds of the national cause. The
Sanitary and Christian Commissions kept camp and home in close touch.
But under all this stir was the tragedy of wide-spread desolation and
bereavement. The multitudinous slaughter of campaigns like the
Wilderness had an awful background of woful families.

Arduous achievement, heroism and anguish, suffering and sacrifice for
the cause of the nation and humanity--that was the North's story in
those years. It is a sublime story as we look back:

The glory dies not, and the grief is past.

Once more the North was called on to solemnly decide, in the election of
1864. Against Lincoln was nominated by the Democrats, General McClellan,
himself a stainless soldier and a patriot, but supported by every
element of hostility to emancipation, of sympathy with the Southern
cause, and of impatience with the long and burdensome struggle. The
platform called for an immediate armistice, to be followed by a
convention of the States, or other peaceable measures for the
restoration of the Union. McClellan's letter of acceptance ignored the
platform, and declared strongly for the persistent maintenance of the
Union. The result of the election was a majority of 400,000 votes in
4,000,000 for Lincoln, every State supporting him save New Jersey,
Kentucky, and Delaware.

It was the greatness of the prize at stake that justified the cost.
Lowell sang the true song of the war, when the end was almost reached,
in the poem that records the sore loss to his own family,--his three
nephews, "likely lads as well could be,"--slain on the battle-field. In
that lofty, mournful verse, there is no drum and trumpet clangor, but
the high purpose whose roots are watered by tears:

Come, Peace, not like a mourner bowed