IX
THE BATTTLE OF GETTYSBURG
It was the climax of a struggle that had been inevitable for fifty years ; and only now, fifty years later, can we look back calmly and disentangle the complicated motives and passions that led up to it.
In the Revolutionary War Massachusetts and Vir- ginia, New York and Georgia, fought side by side, with equal courage and equal sacrifice. All alike felt that free men must move freely to the full and perfect realization of a great republic in a great new continent.
Then the dividing-line came to be drawn more and more sharply. The North was busy, eager, resdess, full of new thoughts and new devices, impatient of tradition and dignity, always looking forward. It lived in cities, amidst the hurry and bustle of cities, the whir of ma- chinery, the smoke of factory chimneys, everywhere the ardor for progress, material and spiritual.
The South was dreamy and quiet ; it loved old days and old ways, old stately manners. It dwelt in broad fields, by quiet rivers, handed down possessions and ideas from father to son, and read the books and thought the thoughts of a hundred years before. To a people so living, the sleepy service of the negro slave was in the natural order of things, just as the impatient North
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