NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR
The real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those
old and complicated debates which lie outside the scope of a
volume such as this. Yet in the particular case of the Northern
people it is imperative to answer two questions both of which
have provoked interminable discussion: Was the moral life of the
North good or bad in the war years? Was its commercial life
sound?
As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first
sight contradictory. The very able Englishman who represented
the "Times", William H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an
American city in 1863:
"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of Chickamauga, during
my three weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the
dead and wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the
officers, belonged to the best families of the place. Yet the
signs of mourning were hardly anywhere perceptible; the noisy
gaiety of the town was not abated one jot."
On the other hand, a private manuscript of a Cincinnati family
describes the "intense gloom hanging over the city like a pall"
during the period of that dreadful battle. The memories of old
people at Cincinnati in after days--if they had belonged to the
"loyal" party--contained only sad impressions of a city that was
one great hospital where "all our best people" worked
passionately as volunteer assistants of the government medical
corps.
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