enever countries or parts of a country get
into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
our side, you see."

"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever."

"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
Lincoln did."

"Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!"

"No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!"

Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
this sunshine spot was a white bird's-next and, and he had a momentary
half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
sound in the boy's ears.

"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and