In the vast
extent of our country,--too vast by far to be taken into one small
human heart,--we inevitably limit to our own State, or, at farthest,
to our own section, that sentiment of physical love for the soil which
renders an Englishman, for example, so intensely sensitive to the
dignity and well-being of his little island, that one hostile foot,
treading anywhere upon it, would make a bruise on each individual
breast. If a man loves his own State, therefore, and is content to be
ruined with her, let us shoot him, if we can, but allow him an
honorable burial in the soil he fights for. [Footnote: We do not
thoroughly comprehend the author's drift in the foregoing paragraph,
but are inclined to think its tone reprehensible, and its tendency
impolitic in the present stage of our national difficulties.]
In Alexandria, we visited the tavern in which Colonel Ellsworth was
killed, and saw the spot where he fell, and the stairs below, whence
Jackson fired the fatal shot, and where he himself was slain a moment
afterwards; so that the assassin and his victim must have met on the
threshold of the spirit-world, and perhaps came to a better
understanding before they had taken many steps on the other side.
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