A Confederate Major General declared that the veterans of General Sherman’s army, pushing their winter way through the swamps and rivers of the South; foraging widely for subsistance and always ready to fight, illustrated a type of soldier that the world had not seen since the days of Julius Cæsar.
The final parade of the Union army along Pennsylvania avenue before the President, the Cabinet, prominent Generals and notables of other nations, displayed a vast procession of seasoned veterans whose effectiveness had never been surpassed. They were the choice, steel-tempered residue of more than two millions of citizen soldiery who had enlisted to preserve the union of States, “one and inseparable,” against the folly of secession.
In the plentitude of their invincible strength, nursing no lust of power, they disbanded to peaceful homes from whence they came; subsiding from their regnant military life as the mighty storm-waves of the ocean sink away into pacific calm.
Apart from wide-spread personal bereavement the North bore no serious scars of war. The perfection of agricultural machinery enabled rich harvests to be gathered in season notwithstanding the dearth of farm help which had gone to the army. Factories of every kind were, with large profits, turning out abundantly all sorts of goods. Our commerce with the world was unhindered, save by the eccentric raids of the Alabama; the muscle and brawn of an ample labor immigration supplied the manual force necessary to national expansion; as illustrated in the building of the trans-continental railroads. The huge war debt instead of being felt as an incubus was but a process of turning into ready cash the prosperity of the future.
Contrast with this picture the condition of the Southern States at the close of the four dreadful years. Within a goodly portion of her borders the country was war-swept and harried by the consuming necessities of vast armies of both friend and foe; for hungry men and beasts on the march and in the fight must subsist largely upon the supplies which the foragers gather from the adjacent regions.
Manufacture, as compared with the North, was a neglected art south of Mason’s and Dixon’s line.
The most extensive and effective naval blockade of history hermetically sealed nearly every Southern port, thereby hopelessly shutting in untold wealth of cotton, the returns of which were otherwise available to every need.
No millions of stalwart immigrants reinforced Southern industry; on the contrary her labor system and property tenure in human beings were shattered in pieces.
The flower of her masculine youth perished; the prestige of ruling intelligence, culture and wealth was dethroned and, to crown her afflictions although she knew it not, the South lost her best and most powerful friend in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Then followed the agonies of political reconstruction and the ignoble invasion of carpet-bag adventurers who, in many instances, were valiant only for pelf.