ful need of vengeance, let
him look into himself. Let him consider his feelings on the death of
some notorious traitor or criminal; not satisfaction, but awe, is the
uppermost feeling in his heart. Death sobers us all. But away from death
this may be unconvincing; and one may still shout of the glory of
floating the ship of freedom in the blood of the enemy. I give him
pause. He may still correct his philosophy in view of the horror of a
street accident or the brutality of a prize-fight.

IV

But war must be faced and blood must be shed, not gleefully, but as a
terrible necessity, because there are moral horrors worse than any
physical horror, because freedom is indispensable for a soul erect, and
freedom must be had at any cost of suffering; the soul is greater than
the body. This is the justification of war. If hesitating to undertake
it means the overthrow of liberty possessed, or the lying passive in
slavery already accomplished, then it is the duty of every man to fight
if he is standing, or revolt if he is down. And he must make no peace
till freedom is assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people
whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending
of limb from limb. The body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal;
and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of
life. Consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither
up a people in a state of slavery. There are the bribes of those in
power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by
time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private
life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all
ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the
quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased
numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and
despair--everywhere a land decaying. Viciousness, meanness, cowardice,
intolerance, every bad thing arises like a weed in the night and blights
the land where freedom is dead; and the aspect of that land and the soul
of that people become spectacles of disgust, revolting and terrible,
terrible for the high things degraded and the great destinies
imperilled. It would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in
two, and sank it into the ocean. To avert the moral plague of slavery
men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those