the overpowering
influence of the simple elemental passions of human nature. "Our
country, right or wrong," may be very bad morality, but it is a
tremendous force to reckon with. One is wise overmuch who thinks that
interest can restrain or statesmen control; wise unto folly who
ignores that disinterested emotion, even unreasoning, may be just the
one factor which diplomacy cannot master. I was in Rome when our late
troubles with Spain came on, and dined with a number of the diplomatic
body. "Oh yes," said to me one of these illuminati, "it is all very
well to talk about humanity. The truth is, the United States wants
Cuba." More profound was the remark of an American politician, who had
recently visited the island. "I did not dare to tell all I saw; for,
if I had, there would be no holding our people back." Personally, I
believed that the interests of the United States made expedient the
acquisition of Cuba, if righteously accomplished, and prior to the war
I knew little of the conditions on the island; but Cuba would be
Spanish now, if interests chiefly had power to move us. So in the War
of Secession. Innumerable precedent occurrences had produced a
condition, but it was the passion for the Union, the strong loyalty to
that sovereign, which dominated the situation, and in truth had been
dominating it silently for years; a passion as profound and, though
justifiable to reason, as unreasoning as any simple love that ever
bound man to woman. Could this have been appreciated, what reams of
demonstration might have been spared to foreign pens--demonstration of
the folly, the hopelessness, the lust of conquest, the self-interest
in myriad forms, which were supposed to be the actuating causes.

Effectively, the South had lost this love of the Union. In this
respect the two sections, I fancy, had parted company, unwittingly,
soon after the War of 1812; through which, as we all well know, in
many quarters sectional feeling had still prevailed over national. The
North had since moved towards national consciousness, the South
towards sectional, on paths steadily and rapidly diverging. As I
recall those days, when I first awoke to political observation, I
should say that the feeling of my Southern associates towards the
Union was that which men have towards a friend lately buried.
Affection had not wholly disappeared; but life called. Let the dead
bury their dead. I remember on my first practice cruise, in 1857,
standing in the