otion to a
holy cause can be found in our present experience as was exhibited by
the French people in their violent and bloody revolution of 1789. The
mercenary spirit has largely infected the military as well as the civil
agencies of our Government. But a people struggling for great principles
are compelled to use such instruments as may be at its command; and if
the material of armies and their connections in civil life be often of a
character to be degraded rather than elevated by the employments and
experiences of war, it is nevertheless certain that these bad effects do
not always, perhaps not generally, outweigh and overpower the good.

History does not present another example of large armies made up of such
men as those who now constitute the defenders of the Union. For
intelligence and moral worth, they are unsurpassed by the masses of any
population in the civilized world, and certainly they are far superior
in all respects to those usually constituting the armies of other
nations. To our shame and regret, there are certainly some exceptions to
this statement; but these are comparatively few, and mostly confined to
those who have not enjoyed the full advantage of our noble system of
universal education. In many instances, the best young men in the land
have gone into the army as privates; while in the rural districts and
from the Western States, the very bone and sinew of the population--the
sober, steady, intelligent, industrious, and prosperous part of the
people--have taken up arms in the cause of the Union, from a deliberate
approval of the policy of the war on our part, and from the noblest and
most unselfish motives of patriotism. The preponderance of such men in
our armies evidently makes them, on the whole, susceptible to the good,
rather than to the bad influences of war. Reflection, self-respect,
rational views of the causes and objects of the war, and elevated
motives of action, cannot fail to bring those who possess these
qualities all the benefits of self-denial, of patriotic labor willingly
expended, and of sacrifices made and sufferings endured in a good and
noble cause. The mental cultivation and moral training of the American
citizen constitute a shield, from whose solid and polished surface the
missiles of temptation, which easily penetrate other defences, usually
glance or rebound with harmless effect. The carnage of the battle field,
the bombardment and capture of cities, and the ravages of a