rch a picnic? This war has been
a giant conflict of principles to decide whether we are a bundle of petty
sovereignties held by a rope of sand or a mighty nation of freemen. But
for the loyalty of four border Southern States--but for Farragut and
Thomas and their two hundred thousand heroic Southern brethren who fought
for the Union against their own flesh and blood, we should have lost. You
cannot indict a people----"

"I do indict them!" muttered the old man.

"Surely," went on the even, throbbing voice, "surely, the vastness of this
war, its titanic battles, its heroism, its sublime earnestness, should
sink into oblivion all low schemes of vengeance! Before the sheer grandeur
of its history our children will walk with silent lips and uncovered
heads."

"And forget the prison pen at Andersonville!"

"Yes. We refused, as a policy of war, to exchange those prisoners,
blockaded their ports, made medicine contraband, and brought the Southern
Army itself to starvation. The prison records, when made at last for
history, will show as many deaths on our side as on theirs."

"The murderer on the gallows always wins more sympathy than his forgotten
victim," interrupted the cynic.

"The sin of vengeance is an easy one under the subtle plea of justice,"
said the sorrowful voice. "Have we not had enough bloodshed? Is not God's
vengeance enough? When Sherman's army swept to the sea, before him lay the
Garden of Eden, behind him stretched a desert! A hundred years cannot give
back to the wasted South her wealth, or two hundred years restore to her
the lost seed treasures of her young manhood----"

"The imbecility of a policy of mercy in this crisis can only mean the
reign of treason and violence," persisted the old man, ignoring the
President's words.

"I leave my policy before the judgment bar of time, content with its
verdict. In my place, radicalism would have driven the border States into
the Confederacy, every Southern man back to his kinsmen, and divided the
North itself into civil conflict. I have sought to guide and control
public opinion into the ways on which depended our life. This rational
flexibility of policy you and your fellow radicals have been pleased to
call my vacillating imbecility."

"And what is your message for the South?"

"Simply this: 'Abolish slavery, come back home, and behave yourself.' Lee
surrendered to our offers of peace and amnesty. In my last message to
Congress I told the Southern peo