Abraham Lincoln and the Union: A Chronicle of the Embattled North

T HE real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those old and complicated debates' which lie outside the scope of a volume such as this. Yet in the particular case of the Northern people it is imperative to answer two questions both of which have provoked interminable discussion: Was the moral life of the North good or bad in the war years? Was its commercial life sound?

As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first sight contradictory. The very able Englishman who represented the Times, William H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an American city in 1863:

"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of Chickamauga, during my three weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the dead and wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the officers, belonged to the best families of the

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