"I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The noblest men of North and South joined with the new President, pleading for peace. They knew by the light of reason that a war of brothers would be a wanton crime. They proved by irresistible logic that every issue dividing the nation could be settled at the Council Table.
They pleaded in vain. They pitched straws against a hurricane. From the deep, subconscious nature of man, the lair of the beast, came only the growl of challenge to mortal combat.
The new President is but a leaf tossed by the wind. The Union of which our fathers dreamed is rent in twain. With tumult and shout, the armies gather, blue and gray, brother against brother. A madman's soul now rides the storm and leads the serried lines as they sweep to the red rendezvous with Death.
CHAPTER XXXVI
A little mother with a laughing boy two years old and baby in her arms was awaiting at a crowded hotel in Washington the coming of her father from the Western plains. Her men were going in opposite directions in these tragic days that were trying the souls of men. Colonel Phillip St. George Cooke was a Virginian. Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart was a Virginian. The soul of the little mother was worn out with the question that had no answer. Why should her lover-husband and her fine old daddy fight each other?
She stood appalled before such a conflict. She had written to her father a letter so gentle, so full of tender appeal, he could not resist its call. She had asked that he come to see her babies and her husband and, face to face, say the things that were in his heart.
Her own sympathies were with her husband. He had breathed his soul into hers. She thought as he thought and felt as he felt. But her dear old daddy must have deep reasons for refusing to follow Virginia, if she should go with the South in Secession. She must hear these reasons. Stuart must hear them. If he could convince them, they would go with him.
In her girl's soul she didn't care which way they went, as long as they did not fight each other. She had watched the shadow of this war deepen with growing anguish. If her father should meet her husband in battle and one should kill the other! How could she live? The thought was too horrible to frame in, words, but it haunted her dreams. She couldn't shake it off.
That her rollicking soldier man would come out alive she felt sure somehow. No other thought was possible. To think that he might be killed in the pride and glory of his youth was nonsense. Her mind refused now to dwell on the idea. She dismissed it with a laugh. He was so vital. He lived to his finger tips. His voice rang with the joy of living. The spirit of eternal youth danced in his blue eyes. He was just twenty-eight years old. He was the father of a darling boy who bore his name and a baby that nestled in her arms to whom they had given hers.