officers say. He was almost too old for active service-the best service in the field. At the time of the surrender he was fifty-eight or fiftynine, and I was forty-three. His officers used to say that he posed himself, that he was retiring and exclusive, and that his headquarters were difficult of access."

Many of us believe that, had Lee stood firm in 1861, and used his personal influence, he could have stayed the Civil War, and thereby saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of the fairest youth of the land, and thousands of millions of dollars in cost and destruction; but since the public mind has settled to the conclusion that the institution of slavery was so interwoven in our system that nothing but the interposition of Providence and horrid war could have eradicated it, and now that it is in the distant past, and that we as a nation, North and South, East and West, are the better for it, we believe that the war was worth to us all it cost in life and treasure. We who fought on the right side are perfectly willing to let this conclusion remain; but when the question of honor to the

memory of our dead heroes is raised at home or abroad, we will fight with pen and speech to secure for our Grant, Thomas, Meade, McPherson, Hancock, Mower, Logan, Blair and a hundred others who were true and faithful, brave and competent, every honor a nation can afford to bestow.

I know full well that it was the fashion in England, during the dark days of our Rebellion, to consider the leaders at the South as heroes contending for freedom, for home and fireside, whereas we of the North were invaders, barbarians, "Huns and Goths," rude and unlettered. This was not true; and every American may, with pride and satisfaction, turn to Mr. Lincoln's first inaugural address; to the glorious uprising of our whole people, who had been engaged in peaceful pursuits, to assume the novel character of soldier; whose leaders emerged from the great mass by the process of nature; who gradually, from books and actual experience, learned the science of war, and so applied its rules as to subdue a rebellion against the national authority by one-third of our people,-a feat never before

accomplished on earth; who, at the conclusion of hostilities, granted terms to the vanquished so generous and magnanimous as to command the admiration of mankind, and then quietly returned to their homes to resume their old occupations of peace. England, and even some of our Eastern States, seem not to realize that the strength of our country lies west of the Alleghenies. They still see only the war in Virginia, and, at furthest, Gettysburg. The Civil War was concluded when Vicksburg, Chattanooga and Atlanta fell. After these it only remained to dispose of Lee's army, which was promptly and scientifically done. Had General Wolseley met General Thomas at Chattanooga in 1864, his quick, discerning mind would have reached another conclusion. He would have doubted whether a single corps of English troops, with the best staff which Aldershot turns out, could have turned the scale after the year 1862.

Of all governments on earth, England is the last to encourage rebellion against lawful authority, and, of all men in England, General

Lord Wolseley is the last who should justify and uphold treason. Ireland, to-day, has many times the cause to rebel against England which the South had in 1861; and when some future Emmet manifests the transcendent qualities which scintillate and sparkle in the Irish charracter, and some enthusiastic American applauds him, and awards him national honors, then will General Wolseley, or his successor in office, understand the feelings of us in America, who, though silent, watch the world's progress toward the conclusion in which truth and justice must stand triumphant over treachery and wrong.

When the time comes to award monuments for service in the Civil War, the American people will be fully prepared to select the subjects without hint or advice from abroad.

W. T. SHERMAN.

OUR ARMY AND MILITIA.

FIFTY years ago, when I was a cadet at West

Point, a bright young lad came from his fond parents, as fresh and innocent as a lamb, duly appointed to dedicate his life to the glorious cause of his country, and to receive the necessary instruction at that national school. He passed through the usual ordeal of admission, and at a suitable moment applied to the commandant of the new cadets with the question, "What must I do to excel in my profession?" He received the blunt answer, "Obey orders." The sequel was that he graduated in the following January, went back to his home, studied law, rose in his profession, and became a judge in one of the United States courts in a western territory.

There is no doubt that to "obey orders" is a large factor in the problem of military life, because subordination to lawful authority is the bond which