so entirely wrong that beside it no other tolerated evil is
wrong. Witness Armenia, and witness Crete. War has been avoided; but
what of the national consciences that beheld such iniquity and
withheld the hand?

NOTE.--This paper was the means of bringing into the author's
hands a letter by the late General Sherman, which forcibly
illustrates how easily, in quiet moments, men forget what
they have owed, and still owe, to the sword. From the
coincidence of its thought with that of the article itself,
permission to print it here has been asked and received.

NEW YORK, February 5th, 1890.

DEAR GENERAL MEIGS,--I attended the Centennial Ceremonies in
honor of the Supreme Court yesterday, four full hours in the
morning at the Metropolitan Opera House, and about the same
measure of time at the Grand Banquet of 850 lawyers in the
evening at the Lenox Lyceum.

The whole was superb in all its proportions, but it was no
place for a soldier. I was bidden to the feast solely and
exclusively because in 1858 for a few short months I was an
attorney at Leavenworth, Kansas.

The Bar Association of the United States has manifestly cast
aside the Sword of Liberty. Justice and Law have ignored the
significance of the Great Seal of the United States, with its
emblematic olive branch and thirteen arrows, "all proper,"
and now claim that, without force, Law and moral suasion have
carried us through one hundred years of history. Of course,
in your study you will read at leisure these speeches, and if
in them you discover any sense of obligation to the Soldier
element, you will be luckier than I, a listener.

From 1861 to 1865 the Supreme Court was absolutely paralyzed;
their decrees and writs were treated with contempt south of
the Potomac and Ohio; they could not summon a witness or send
a Deputy Marshal. War, and the armed Power of the Nation,
alone removed the barrier and restored to the U.S. courts
their lawful jurisdiction. Yet, from these honied words of
flattery, a stranger would have inferred that at last the
lawyers of America had discovered the sovereign panacea of a
Government without force, either visible or in reserve.

I was in hopes the Civil War had dispelled this dangerous
illusion, but it seems not.