He Was Expressing
The General Idea On The Subject Of A Large Body Of Americans.
It
was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war.
Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all.
They know it to be fraught with the saddest consequences.
It was
so regarded in the mind of that Senator. But the braggadocio could
not be omitted. Had be omitted it, he would have been untrue to
his constituency.
When I left Boston for Washington, nothing was as yet known of what
the English government or the English lawyers might say. This was
in the first week in December, and the expected voice from England
could not be heard till the end of the second week. It was a
period of great suspense, and of great sorrow also to the more
sober-minded Americans. To me the idea of such a war was terrible.
It seemed that in these days all the hopes of our youth were being
shattered. That poetic turning of the sword into a sickle, which
gladdened our hearts ten or twelve years since, had been clean
banished from men's minds. To belong to a peace party was to be
either a fanatic, an idiot, or a driveler. The arts of war had
become everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible but
capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out
of sight, were the only recognized results of man's inventive
faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more ships than the
French was England's glory.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 512 of 538
Words from 136326 to 136584
of 143277
