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Anna Dickinson describes the antidraft riots in New York, and reserves her finest indignation for Governor Seymour, who responded to the rioting by promising to try to have the Federal draft law repealed. Says she: "His allies in newspaper offices attempted to throw the blame upon the loyal press and portion of the community. This was but a repetition of the cry raised by traitors in arms that the government, struggling for life in their deadly hold, was responsible for the war: 'If thou wouldst but consent to be murdered peaceably, there could be no strife.' "
"The Snowy Heights." From the vast material available, Commager could easily have told the war in the words of private citizens and private soldiers. He has, however, turned his back upon the inverse snobbery which minimizes the part of generals and politicians in great struggles. Sherman's letter to the leading citizens of Atlanta, explaining why their city had to be evacuated, is as good an essay on war as was ever written "in haste." The Olympian Lee seems far more human for his letter to Jeff Davis advising what 1950 would call a shrewd propaganda line: Lee urged Davis not to disillusion those Northern members of the peace party who thought they could have both peace and the Union.
Commager's Civil War—the participants' Civil War—is no blind grappling of unwary hosts, but a highly purposive endeavor, enlightened on both sides by respect for principle, or what Commager calls "character." He quotes a veteran of the 20th Massachusetts, the younger Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us."