Lydia started off down the hill.
"She will find a buggy at our stable-camp," said Dr. Khayme; "it is but a short distance down there."
The Doctor smoked. I thought of many things. His view of war was not new, by any means; of course, in the abstract he was right: war is wrong, and that which is wrong is unwise; but how to prevent war? A nation that will not preserve itself, how can it exist? I could not doubt that secession is destruction. If the Union should now or ever see itself broken up, then farewell to American liberties; farewell to the hopes of peoples against despotism. To refuse war, to tamely allow the South to withdraw and set up a government of her own, would be but the beginning of the end; at the first grievance California, Massachusetts, any State, could and would become independent. No; war must come; the Union must be preserved; the nation was at the forks of the road; for my part, I could not hesitate; we must take one road or the other; war was forced upon us. But why reason thus, as though we still had choice? War already exists; we must make the best of it; we are down to-day, but Bull Run is not the whole of the war; one field is lost, but all is not lost.
"Doctor," I asked, "why do you say that yesterday will prove to be the crisis of the war?"
"Because," he answered, "yesterday's lesson was well taught and will be well learned; it was a rude lesson, but it will prove a wholesome one. Your government now knows the enormous work it has to do. We shall now see preparation commensurate with the greatness of the work. Three months' volunteers are already a thing of the past. This war might have been avoided; all war might be avoided; but this war has not been avoided; America will be at war for years to come."
I was silent.
"We shall have a new general, Jones; General McClellan is ordered to report immediately in person to the war department."
"Why a new general? McClellan is well enough, I suppose; but what has McDowell done to deserve this?"
"He has failed. Failure in war is unpardonable; every general that fails finds it so; McClellan may find it so."
"You are not much of a comforter, Doctor."