etuity of Republican principles on this continent depends upon our success." Which was the soldier from Alabama, which from Connecticut, which from Tennessee?
James McPherson, working in the wake of the Vietnam War, explored the motivations of Civil War soldiers:
A veteran who became a student of the Civil War after his tour in Vietnam was awestruck by the dedication of soldiers in that earlier conflict. In all his Vietnam experience he had met only one American "who had the same 'belief structure' as the Civil War soldiers." In Vietnam "the soldier fought for his own survival, not a cause. The prevailing attitude was: do your time ... keep your head down, stay out of trouble, get out alive." How different was the willingness of Civil War soldiers to court death in a conflict whose casualty rate was several times greater than for American soldiers in Vietnam. "I find that kind of devotion ... mystifying." ["For Cause and Comrades," pp. 4-5]
Of course McPherson, and perhaps his unnamed student, had their own generational attitudes toward the war in Vietnam. But it seems the sea-change in American attitude was something that took place before Vietnam; World War II soldiers, who had cause to take up patriotic themes without embarrassment, tended to have no patience for such talk. The prevailing attitude wasn't the same as Vietnam, but perhaps was closer to it than it was to the Civil War: "Do your part, keep your head down, get home in one piece."
LOSING OUR RELIGION
There came a time, after the Civil War, after the centennial of the Revolution decade, after everyone with any living memory of it was dead, that thoughtful Americans could look ahead to a fuller, more mature contemplation of their history. By 1885 a majestic national historian like John B. McMaster, with a huge audience at his knee, could write about Washington the man, in ways more remarkable than the myth, and ready to step forth from behind the statuary:
No other face is so familiar to us. His name is written all over the map of our country. We have made of his birthday a national feast. The outlines of his biography are known to every school-boy in the land. Yet his true biography is still to be prepared. General Washington is known to us, and President Washington. But George Washington is an unknown man. When at last he is set before us in his habit as he lived, we shall read less of the cherry-tree and more of the man. Naught surely that is heroic will be omitted, but side by side with what is heroic will appear much that is commonplace. We shall behold the great commander repairing defeat with marvellous celerity, healing the dissentions of his officers, and calming the passions of his mutinous troops. But we shall also hear his oaths, and see him in those terrible outbursts of passion to which Mr. Jefferson has alluded, and one of which Mr. Lear has described. ... We shall know him as the cold and forbidding character with whom no fellow-man ever ventured to live on close and familiar terms. We shall respect and honor him for being, not the greatest of generals, not the wisest of statesmen, not the most saintly of his race, but a man with may human frailties and much common sense, who rose in the fullness of time to be the political deliverer of our country. ["History of the People of the United States," vol. II, pp.452-3]
And it is possible to look into the details of Washington's biography and see what might have been made of him for a modern America. Washington held himself aloof from his peers, as he felt befitted his role. He endured the familiarity of men who sought to treat him as an equal, but he never returned anything for it. Within the ordered social arrangements, he had few men who could be called friends. Yet one close companion was his able wife, Martha. She was in every sense his adviser and confidante. He married her though his heart was on another woman (Sally Fairfax). Stoic Washington never cost his nation a scandal. It would have been unthinkable.
Another who could be called a friend of the "cold and forbidding character" was his sl