DEBASING INFLUENCE OF THE WAR 77 



before it I can see that while the ideals of culture were in a way 

 still low and rather carnal, there was an eager reaching-out 

 for better things; men and women were seeking, through his- 

 tory, literature, the fine arts, and in some measure through 

 science, for a share in the higher life. Four years of civil war, 

 which turned the minds of all towards what is at once the most 

 absorbing and debasing interest of man, made an end of this 

 and set the people on a moral and intellectual plane lower than 

 that they occupied when they were warring with the wilder- 

 ness and the savages. War is always degrading to the states 

 that urge it, but it is most so when it is between brothers and 

 hearthstones; therefore the tide which was setting towards 

 the better life was stayed ; the thoughts of men turned back 

 towards the primitive. Many of those who might have led were 

 slain; others sought homes elsewhere for a society thus 

 racked by civil war is no place for a man who seeks to make 

 a career. In 1855 there were few communities holding more 

 of promise for our race than that of the new commonwealth; 

 in 1865 few that were less hopeful. 



I have referred above to Thomas F. Marshall, a man of sin- 

 gular attractiveness and talents with whom I had a curious re- 

 lation. I first met him when I was about fourteen years of age, 

 when he, for some time a congressman, had through drunken- 

 ness fallen into a curious half -abandoned mode of life. He was 

 then an oldish fellow, but retained much of his youthful splen- 

 dor. He was about six feet three inches high, but so well built 

 that he did not seem large, until you stood beside him. His 

 face, even when marred by drink, had something of majesty in 

 it. Marshall, when I knew him, picked up a scanty living as a 

 lecturer. When sober, which he often was for months at a time, 

 his favorite subject was temperance. On this theme he was as 

 eloquent as Gough ; in his season of spree, he turned to history. 

 The gradations were not sharp, for he would, as I have seen 

 him, preach most admirably of the evil of drink while he sup- 

 ported himself in his fervent oratory with whiskey from a silver 



