I rather fancy, however, that his moral sense
was yet too torpid to trouble him with such remorseful visions, and
that, for his own part, he might have had very agreeable reminiscences
of the soldier's death, if other eyes had not been bent reproachfully
upon him and warned him that something was amiss. It was this reproach
in other men's eyes that made him look aside. He was a wild-beast, as I
began with saying,--an unsophisticated wild-beast,--while the rest of
us are partially tamed, though still the scent of blood excites some of
the savage instincts of our nature. What this wretch needed, in order
to make him capable of the degree of mercy and benevolence that exists
in us, was simply such a measure of moral and intellectual development
as we have received; and, in my mind, the present war is so well
justified by no other consideration as by the probability that it will
free this class of Southern whites from a thraldom in which they
scarcely begin to be responsible beings. So far as the education of the
heart is concerned, the negroes have apparently the advantage of them;
and as to other schooling, it is practically unattainable by black or
white.
Looking round at these poor prisoners, therefore, it struck me as an
immense absurdity that they should fancy us their enemies; since,
whether we intend it so or no, they have a far greater stake on our
success than we can possibly have.
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