These words written by an American Patriot following the Civil War are relevant to us today…

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“A dynastic power was begotten of that war that has for twenty years terrorized the people of this country, and, even if my health would have permitted, I have not had that confidence in the Americanism of the people which could induce me to antagonize the wrath of a power founded on terror and nurtured on fraud.

I believe that power is passing away; that war was a conspiracy, a general tendency of many causes leading to one result.

It was a rebellion only in the feeble sense that it was a war against the constituted authority.

Rebellion is always in the interest of the many; conspiracy is in the interest of the few. That war was begun in the interest of the few. The conspiracy voiced at Montgomery in 1861 established a reign of terror over the South. The conspiracy hatched at Altoona in 1862 inaugurated a reign of terror over the North. This reign has continued till it has garnered the wealth of the country, and is almost prepared for a new conflict, seeking its pretext in the passive resistance of the many. Previous to 1861, official integrity had been the dominating principle in the public affairs. Political partisans had reviled and traduced political opponents as scurrilously as they have done in later days, but the offices once gained had been generally held with honor and probity.

The years of 1861 and 1862 were a period of transition in which public thought became so polarized that after 1862 public office was regarded as a private boodle; the buzzard replaced the eagle in the nation's shield; loyalty to American citizenship was determined by fealty to the party in power, and the war was continued. I believe that the time has come when the people of this country will permit the truth to be told to them, and that they will receive it with understanding. There is always an unwritten history which passes “from mouth to mouth" in personal confidences, and is finally buried in the reticence or the timidity of its possessors. This it is which the historian, gathering up from the unpublished writings of actors who have passed away, makes use of to present in true colors the history of the times of which he writes.

I have been reminded that life is not now as it was thirty years ago; that modern inventions have revolutionized methods as well as thought; that what was good for that generation is not adapted to this, and vice versa. But I do know that Truth is eternal; that integrity, truth in action, is equally so, and that all departures lead sooner or later to evil, both in the lives of individuals and of peoples.

I was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1853, with a fair record in conduct and studies. I entered the academy thoroughly imbued with some puritanical notions of right and wrong, of good and evil, of honor and duty, and I left the academy with those notions unimpaired, and I rejoice that, amid all the temptations of a busy and, I hope, useful life, they have remained with me "without wane or shadow of turning."

Puritanism is the salt that has saved this country thus far, but the stock of it is running low, and the most useful invention of today would furnish means of supplying the lack.”

from Report of a Commissary of Subsistence, 1861-1865 By Henry Clay Symonds