WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE 
 
 EUGENICS OF WAR 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 THE LATE WARS IN THE BALKANS 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY 
 AND 
 
 HARVEY ERNEST JORDAN 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HISTOLOGY AND EMBRYOLOGY 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HARVEY ERNEST JORDAN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October iqi^ 
 

 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 IN the summer of 1912, the undersigned, 
 under the auspices of the World Peace 
 Foundation, made an attempt to form some 
 measure of the effects, on the Southern 
 States of our National Union, of the reversed 
 selection due to the loss of life in the Civil 
 War of fifty years ago. In this work he was 
 associated with Professor Edward Benjamin v 
 Krehbiel, of the chair of Modern History in 
 
 Stanford University, and with Professor 
 
 ^ 
 
 Harvey E. Jordan, of the chair of Histology 
 and Embryology in the University of Vir- 
 ginia. Professor Krehbiel devoted himself to 
 the historical and statistical phases of the 
 subject, while Professor Jordan and the 
 writer considered chiefly the biological ele- 
 ments, especially those related to eugenics 
 and race progress. The present memoir con- 
 v 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 tains an abstract of the material secured and 
 the conclusions reached in this phase of the 
 investigation, the others being later treated 
 elsewhere. It will be freely admitted that all 
 conclusions must be tentative and that no 
 mathematical accuracy in the statement of 
 the eugenic loss of the Civil War is possible. 
 But, on the other hand, the evidence of the 
 magnitude of such loss grows, in cumulating 
 degree, with every additional survey of the 
 facts concerned. The writers are under spe- 
 cial obligation to some hundreds of veterans 
 of the Confederate army in Virginia, Georgia, 
 North Carolina, and other States for frank 
 and friendly discussion of the questions in- 
 volved, and to about one hundred others, not 
 personally known, who have answered sym- 
 pathetically our letters of inquiry. 
 
 For the studies in question, Rockbridge 
 and Spottsylvania Counties, in Virginia, 
 with Cobb County, in Georgia, were espe- 
 cially chosen as typical districts. Observa- 
 vi 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 tions of minor importance were made in 
 Henrico, Dinwiddie, and Appomattox Coun- 
 ties, in Virginia, Wake County, in North 
 Carolina, and Knox County, in Tennessee. 
 The appended poem, by the undersigned, is 
 suggested by our experiences in "The Wilder- 
 ness" of Spottsylvania. 
 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN. 
 
 THE RED HOUSE, 
 
 HORNTON STREET, LONDON, 
 July 25, 1913- 
 
 NOTE. An Introduction dealing with the outbreak 
 of the general European war and an additional chap- 
 ter on Macedonia, both written by Dr. David Starr 
 Jordan while this book was in press, will be found 
 in the succeeding pages. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1914 . . . . . . xiii 
 
 IN THE WILDERNESS xxv 
 
 WAR'S AFTERMATH IN VIRGINIA 
 
 THE PROBLEM AT ISSUE I 
 
 SPOTTSYLVANIA COUNTY . . . . . 8 
 ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY . . . . . . IO 
 
 COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA II 
 
 PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS ' 12 
 
 VOLUNTEER AND CONSCRIPT . . . . 13 
 
 THE DESERTER 15 
 
 THE MILITARY COMPANIES . . . .18 
 
 STATISTICAL EXACTNESS IMPOSSIBLE . . .19 
 ANALYSIS OF OPINION . . ... .20 
 
 "BEST MEN FIRST TO ENLIST" . . . . 22 
 
 THE FLOWER OF THE PEOPLE LOST . . 24 
 
 WAR TOOK CHIEFLY THE PHYSICALLY FlT . 29 
 
 VOLUNTEERS SUPERIOR TO CONSCRIPTS . . 30 
 
 ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 "BUSHMEN" AND OTHER DESERTERS FEW . 32 
 
 THOSE WHO FOUGHT MOST SURVIVED LEAST . 33 
 
 THE BEST LOST MOST 36 
 
 THE BEST BLOOD SUFFERED MOST ... 39 
 
 THE STRONG MISSED SINCE THE WAR . . 41 
 
 SUFFERING AND DEATH OF WIDOWS . . 45 
 SWEETHEARTS REMAINED UNMARRIED; OTHERS 
 
 MARRIED IN LOWER STATIONS . ... 45 
 
 FARMERS NOW NOT INFERIOR .... 47 
 
 MEN IN COURTS AVERAGE LOWER ... 48 
 PUBLIC MEN INFERIOR, THE GREAT MEN 
 
 FEWER 49 
 
 RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS .... 52 
 
 ALL CLASSES KILLED IN WAR . 53 
 
 LACK OF SCHOOLING vs. INFERIORITY OF BLOOD 54 
 
 Loss OF COURAGE 56 
 
 LOWERING OF AVERAGE THROUGH IMMIGRA- 
 TION 57 
 
 EFFECTS OF WHISKEY 58 
 
 COUSIN MARRIAGE 59 
 
 Loss OF STRENGTH THROUGH EMIGRATION . 59 
 x 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE STRONG FELL IN BATTLE, THE WEAK DIED 
 
 IN CAMPS 62 
 
 INJURY THROUGH FAILURE IN EDUCATION . 64 
 
 POSSIBILITY OF AVOIDING THE CIVIL WAR . 64 
 
 DEMOCRACY OF THE CAMP 69 
 
 DISAPPEARANCE OF SOCIAL LINES ... 70 
 
 BLESSINGS OF LABOR 70 
 
 SOCIAL GOOD FOLLOWED THE WAR, BUT WAR 
 
 WHOLLY BAD 71 
 
 NOT ONE WORD TO BE SAID FOR WAR, AS WAR 71 
 
 CONCLUSION 77 
 
 WAR'S AFTERMATH IN MACEDONIA 84 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 1914 
 
 THIS little book was written, by my col- 
 league and myself, just at the outbreak of 
 the Balkan War. This note is written at the 
 outbreak of the greater war instigated though 
 not caused by the attempted suppression of 
 Servia and the rape of Belgium. In the mean 
 time the senior author has seen much of the 
 first aftermath of war in other nations. He 
 has traversed Macedonia and beheld its 
 desolation and the expulsion of half its peo- 
 ple. He has seen the Bulgarians driven north- 
 ward by tens of thousands up the Struma 
 Valley from the Greek possessions. He has 
 been cognizant of the forced emigration from 
 Silistria and from Thrace. He has seen Al- 
 banians driven from the Novibazar, these 
 in turn driving Greeks by the hundred thou- 
 sand out of Turkish Thrace. And from the 
 xiii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Greek possessions he has seen Moslems by 
 the thousand leaving in the steerage of 
 steamers bound from Salonica to Stamboul. 
 All these, farmers and villagers, rich or poor, 
 had left behind their holdings with only that 
 which they could carry on their backs. And 
 the burned houses of the refugees of the one 
 race became the new homes of some other. 
 And the way of the refugee is hard, beset by 
 hunger, cold, and the infectious diseases 
 which always follow war. For sanitation 
 implies security and peace, and these the 
 battling ages never knew. 
 
 Macedonia is about as large as Virginia. 
 It has had two thousand years of civiliza- 
 tion. Aristotle was born there, and alas, 
 Alexander also. But it is still a wilderness, 
 poorly cultivated, scantily cleared. A Chin- 
 ese proverb tells us, "Where armies quarter, 
 thorns and thistles grow." Armies have 
 quartered in Macedonia for a hundred gen- 
 erations. St. Paul found Christians there, 
 xiv 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 perhaps as many as exist there now, and at 
 Philippi in Macedonia the last gleam of 
 Roman liberty flickered to extinction. In 
 this old Macedonia are rich farmlands, cov- 
 ered with tangling vines and prairie flowers, 
 seeming never to have known the plough. 
 
 How rich the human harvest buried in 
 Macedonia, in the weary warring years from 
 Philippi to Kilkis! Let our imagination com- 
 pare the men of to-day with the men who 
 might have been: the men of to-day fur- 
 tively huddled in dirty villages fired by each 
 passing army, and the others lost to the 
 world before they were born because their 
 fathers died in these same armies. "Those 
 who fought the most survived the least," 
 in Macedonia as in Virginia. Only the man 
 who survives is followed by his kind. The 
 man who is left determines the future. From 
 him springs "the human harvest," and, as 
 in Rome, and in every war-swept region, the 
 human harvest in Macedonia is bad. 
 xv 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Since this book was in type, a world revo- 
 lution has taken place. The flames of the 
 Balkans have spread to greater Europe. A 
 civil war has torn apart the civilization of 
 our times. The Europe we have known, the 
 Europe of science, art, literature, commerce, 
 and industry, exists no more. A mad rush 
 of barbarism has wrecked it all, the barbar- 
 ism it cherished for its own defense. It has 
 broken all restraining bonds of common 
 interest, of common friendliness, and of com- 
 mon thought. The mailed fist has crashed 
 through the delicate far-flung fabric which 
 has meant so much to us. It has brushed 
 aside our conventions of international law 
 and of personal rights as though these had 
 been cobwebs. 
 
 It is not the barbarism of one nation 
 alone. Each nation in its degree has yielded 
 to the same influence. But the democracies 
 of Europe have held it in restraint. The 
 autocracies are its creations. Those nations 
 xvi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 which the people do not govern are derelicts 
 on the international sea, dangerous to others, 
 and still more so to themselves. The spirit 
 of Absolutism is everywhere the same. It 
 holds all Europe under martial law, and mar- 
 tial law is not law. It is law's paralysis. 
 
 Against the onrush of barbarism, the na- 
 tions of Europe have created no defense, 
 save barbarism itself. Against the force of 
 arms, they oppose only the force of arms. 
 It is too late to ask if there is a better way. 
 There is no other left to-day. The better 
 way was possible, not now, but ten years 
 ago. In the midst of war, there is but one 
 way out, and that leads onward. 
 
 Of the contending nations, Belgium alone 
 had clean hands when the war began. She 
 is destined to be the greatest sufferer to the 
 last, and the sufferings she feels and must 
 feel again it is impossible for the imagina- 
 tion to conceive, or the pen to record. 
 
 The economic development of Belgium 
 xvii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 is checked for half a century. Her social 
 development is deranged for we know not 
 how long. Exhaustion, stagnation, misery, 
 all these affect the physical, the economic, 
 the social, the intellectual life. Thorns and 
 thistles grow in the harassed mind as in the 
 devastated field. The higher life withers in 
 the atmosphere of poverty and pestilence. 
 The muses flee from the wolf at the door. 
 
 Beyond the present loss, when the "hu- 
 man cry as of a lost and deserted child " is 
 hushed, follows the weakening of the na- 
 tional stamina. The best of the young blood 
 is lost. Those who should have been the 
 fathers of the next generation lie in the 
 trenches of Liege, Namur, Dinant, and 
 Charleroi. After each war comes the pau- 
 city of genius, the failure of personal initia- 
 tive. The sons of those whom war could not 
 use replace those who gave their lives for 
 the country. When a man of distinction 
 gives up his life for any cause he sacrifices 
 xviii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 more than himself. He closes the door of the 
 long future of those who might have been. 
 In the strange world of "Pan-Germany" 
 is invented a lying philosophy as a sanction 
 for war. In contemptuous ignorance of all 
 Darwin's work and thought, they call it " So- 
 cial Darwinism/' This philosophy teaches 
 that the "survival of the fittest" imposes 
 on us the necessity of war, that war is, in- 
 deed, the sublime instrument by which the 
 Deity ordains the destruction of the hum- 
 blest of his creatures that his favorites in 
 shining armor may inherit the earth. The 
 small nations and the backward nations 
 must yield to the sway of the strong, and 
 even the strong from time to time must give 
 up the half of their number, as a sacrifice to 
 insure their continued strength: and there- 
 fore murder and rapine are necessities of 
 progress. "War without rapine," says Ana- 
 tole France, " is like tripe without mustard, 
 too insipid" for a man of spirit, 
 xix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The military exponent of Pan-Germanism, 
 General von Bernhardi, demonstrates that 
 "Law is only for the weak; force is for the 
 strong; law is only a makeshift; might the 
 sole reality." Perverting all history, he 
 would make us believe that in war the fittest 
 survive. "War is as necessary as the strug- 
 gle of the elements in nature." "Inferior 
 or decaying races would easily choke the 
 growth of the healthy budding element and 
 a universal decadence would follow." The 
 simple fact is that, always and everywhere, 
 war means the reversal of natural selection. 
 Twenty centuries ago, Sophocles declared 
 that "war does not of choice destroy bad 
 men, but good men ever." In every war in 
 every nation there is left "the gap in our 
 picked and chosen the long years cannot 
 fill." 
 
 Schiller, one of the noblest spirits in that 
 Germany which Prussian militarism is smoth- 
 ering and poisoning to-day, touched the real 
 xx 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 truth in a single line: "Immer der Krieg 
 verschlingt die Besten." ("Always war de- 
 vours the best/ 5 ) The best of everything is 
 drawn into its insatiate maw. 
 
 In the Civil War between the States, the 
 position of Virginia fifty years ago had much 
 in common with that of Belgium to-day. 
 Neither had any leading part in the original 
 causes of conflict. Both, through geographi- 
 cal position, lay in the very center of devas- 
 tation. In both the disaster is the sadder 
 because it is spread over generations to come. 
 
 As the Union of the States "could not 
 exist half slave, half free," so the union of 
 Europe could not endure with Absolutism 
 and Democracy side by side. No democracy 
 is safe with an autocracy as its neighbor. 
 No mailed despot is safe by the side of a free 
 people. 
 
 The "Armed Peace" of Europe, with its 
 mediaeval "Balance of Power," carried with- 
 in itself the certainty of its own destruction, 
 xxi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is to be destroyed by its own barbarous 
 methods. War is a sword without a hilt 
 which wounds those who wield it as well as 
 those who feel its blade. It is an instrument 
 of barbarism, and civilization can never be 
 secure while calling on barbarism for its de- 
 fense. No holy war was ever carried on save 
 by the most unholy means. And every war, 
 holy or unholy, wanton or inevitable, brings 
 desolation as its aftermath. 
 
 Meanwhile, as I write, the dance of death 
 goes on. Three hundred millions of men and 
 women of Europe, hoping above all for secur- 
 ity and peace, stand helplessly by, awaiting 
 the end, suffering the present misery and 
 taking unresisting the final consequences. 
 There is no other way. The god of battles 
 is deaf and blind. "A great soldier like me/' 
 said Napoleon, "cares not a tinker's damn 
 for the lives of a million men." He recks no 
 more for the wail of an outraged nation than 
 for the cry of a starving child. 
 xxii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 As the future of Europe shall unfold it- 
 self, and as the fate of the devastated states 
 shall begin to take form, it may be instruc- 
 tive to glance backward over the half-cen- 
 tury which has seen the humiliation and the 
 regeneration of one of the noblest of the 
 commonwealths which make up our Repub- 
 lic, the State of Virginia. 
 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN. 
 
 LONDON, August 25, 1914. 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 I 
 
 I STAND as in a dream within a wood, 
 A forest crass men call "The Wilderness," 
 Of ill-grown oak trees and stunt, scanty pines, 
 With sumacs dun and huddling sassafras, 
 Enmeshed with brambles rude and tangling 
 
 vines ; 
 
 Its mossy brooksides blue with violets, 
 Its red soil ever redder with men's hurt. 
 Men named this forest once "The Poisoned 
 
 Wood," 
 
 And it was poisoned by the wrath of man, 
 'T was trebly poisoned by the flames of Hell 
 That burned through every corner of the wood. 
 
 Out from the forest, as in nightmare dream, 
 Out from its straggling trees and struggling 
 
 vines, 
 
 Out from its red soil, redder with men's hurt, 
 Its ravaged banksides blue with violets ; 
 From withering venom of its flames of Hell, 
 I see a sad procession creeping down, 
 Full seven miles of maimed and broken men, 
 
 xxv 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Full seven miles of ghastly shapes of men, 
 Pour like a vomit from the Wilderness. 
 Out from the pious shades of Salem Church, 
 Out from the charcoal Furnace on the hill, 
 From sparse farmhouses saturate with dread, 
 Field hospitals of gruesome awfulness, 
 Where women, war-crazed, neither knew nor 
 
 cared 
 
 If their own children were alive or dead. 
 From Sunlight's enfilade where Sedgwick fell, 
 The cross-roads court-house with the old town 
 
 pump, 
 
 Inviting pause upon the Richmond road, 
 The Bloody Angle, by McCool's sweet spring, 
 From the old roadside inn whose awful name 
 Men spoke in bated whispers Chancellors ville ! 
 
 In its green paddock, leading toward the ford 
 Of Rappahannock and of Rapidan, 
 Amidst the peach trees' rosy blossoming, 
 Among the whitewashed shanties of the slaves, 
 The ground was piled thrice deep with wrecks 
 
 of men 
 
 Living and dying those which once were men, 
 The Blue the Red commingled with the 
 
 Gray! 
 The blazing Inn an awesome funeral pyre. 
 
 xxvi 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 And whoso sought his friend must pick his way 
 
 As one who leaps from floating log to log 
 
 In some far Northern river Chancellorsville! 
 
 Men tell us how the angry sun went down, 
 
 A bloodshot disk upon a shrinking sky; 
 
 And then uprose the great white Maytime 
 
 moon, 
 
 Flooding the forest with her patient light, 
 Till Horror paled in dumb forgetfulness. 
 
 Can we give praise to Lord of Heaven, or Hell, 
 For aught men did here in the Wilderness? 
 
 II 
 
 Down in yon somber hollow Jackson fell, 
 His red hand raised in worship, to the last, 
 Austere, devoted, of his Duty sure, 
 For States make Duty of the wrath of man, 
 Imputing Righteousness to deeds abhorred. 
 "The soldier has no duty save to die." 
 And is this Duty that he thus should die? 
 Are nations built on bones of mangled men? 
 Have bonds of union no cement save blood? 
 " Obedience to the Law before all Time!" 
 But then is such obedience supreme, 
 Brought to fulfillment through red-handed 
 
 rage? 
 
 XXVll 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 "The brave makes Danger Opportunity." 
 Is there no danger save from cannonades ? 
 Is there no hardier, craftier foe than this 
 Whose strength is measured by a saber-thrust? 
 The path to Justice between man and man 
 Must lead through strife, but not through pools 
 
 of blood; 
 
 The clash of will, but not the crush of men. 
 But war's fierce furnace melts the chains of 
 
 slaves ; 
 
 Its march obliterates old vested wrongs; 
 Foul Bastilles crumble at its trumpet call, 
 And tyrants gasp at serried hosts of men. 
 War's candent fire-bath purifies the state, 
 War's furnace heat the bond of union welds. 
 Shall not war bring the great Enfranchise- 
 ment, 
 The freedom from all shackles of the Past? 
 
 He reaps dire harvest who sows dragon's teeth! 
 When Law is silent, anarch Murder rules; 
 Law is humanity's consummate flower, 
 And Love is the fulfillment of the Law. 
 Its blind and brute denial, that is War, 
 The Laws of War! In war, there is no law, 
 Where war is not, there and there only 
 Law. 
 
 xxviii 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Where armies quarter, thorns and thistles grow- 
 New wrongs spring ever in the wake of war, 
 From their hot ashes mount up fresh Bastilles; 
 The Sutler camps on the Avenger's trail; 
 The Mailed Fist is but a burglar's tool; 
 Gross cities swell with loot of great campaigns 
 The Vulture gorges where the Eagle strikes. 
 
 And each fresh slaughter dwarfs the breed of men. 
 The Unreturning ever were the Brave! 
 
 Nothing enduring yet in wrath was wrought; 
 No noble deed in hatred; evermore 
 The Master Builder works in soberness ; 
 A world which reeked with wars, and reeks 
 
 again, 
 The Prince of Peace in patience re-creates. 
 
 Oh, take away the frippery of war, 
 Its zest for glory, its mouth-filling lies, 
 Its rippling colors and resounding drums, 
 Its chargers, bannerets, and bugle calls, 
 Its heady wine of music and acclaim 
 That make a slaughter seem a holiday! 
 
 Oh, take away the sanction of the State, 
 That haloes murder with a holy light, 
 
 xxix 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 That makes our common hate seem Wrath 
 
 Divine, 
 And thunderous shoutings as the voice of God. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I do remember in the far-off years, 
 Through the long twilight of the August nights 
 (The nights of half a century ago), 
 I waited for my brother, whom I loved, 
 I waited for my brother, and he came, 
 Came but in dreams and never came again, 
 For he was with the Sisterhood of Fate; 
 Man is; Man is not; Man shall never be. 
 
 IV 
 
 How like a chasm yawns our history! 
 
 Still figures pour out from the Poisoned Wood. 
 
 I seem to see them on their fated way, 
 
 I seem to see them creep from death to death, 
 
 Full seven miles of crushed and wasted men, 
 
 Full seven miles of tattered shreds of men, 
 
 Some dazed with blood, not knowing what they 
 
 do, 
 
 Rising to fall, and falling not to rise. 
 Whither they go What matter? They must 
 
 go! 
 
 xxx 
 
IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 If there be ghosts, they hover o'er this road; 
 If they be ghosts, they fill this Poisoned Wood! 
 
 Perchance no spirits wander of the slain, 
 For these are sleeping in the woodland glade, 
 The Blue for aye unsevered with the Gray. 
 Under that Flag where Hatred dies away 
 They rest as men may rest whose work is done, 
 The Horror lost in blest forgetfulness. 
 For they are with the Sisterhood of Fate, 
 Man is; Man is not; Man shall never be. 
 
 Yet there be ghosts here, ghosts that haunt for 
 
 aye! 
 
 Rising forever from the Poisoned Wood, 
 The Slain Unnumbered; those who, still unborn, 
 Through wistful ages never to be born, 
 Never may answer to their country's call; 
 The long, sad roll that lengthens with the years. 
 The sweet life wasted, widening with the years, 
 Those who have lived not, never yet can live; 
 Their fathers slumber in the Wilderness, 
 While these are with the Sisterhood of Fate, 
 Man is; Man is not; Man shall never be. 
 
 Shall God not fill another universe 
 
 With Life we waste in wicked wantonness? 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 I 
 
 IN VIRGINIA * 
 THE PROBLEM AT ISSUE 
 
 THE problem considered in this memoir is 
 that of the determination of the racial or 
 biological consequences of the War between 
 the States of America in 1861 to 1865. It is 
 well ascertained that eugenic or racial de- 
 cline, which may occur in any region, is due 
 to one or all of three causes : 
 
 (1) Destruction of the fittest, through war 
 or other cause producing contra-selec- 
 tion or reversal of selection. 
 
 (2) Emigration, by which the most ener- 
 getic or enterprising pass on to other 
 regions or in search of larger oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 I 
 
WAR S AFTERMATH 
 
 (3) Immigration, by which the vacancies 
 are filled by weaker stock, "the beaten 
 men of the beaten races/' 
 
 These influences, nowhere wholly absent, 
 have affected different nations in varying 
 fashion. In the Eastern and Southern 
 United States, a visible decline of average is 
 associated with the first of these causes, and 
 in certain localities with the second also. The 
 third cause has been also potent, but mostly 
 in the great cities and the centers of manu- 
 facture. The present discussion is confined 
 chiefly to the first of these elements, the re- 
 versed selection of war. For purposes of in- 
 tensity and accuracy, it is further confined to 
 the Southern States and for the most part to 
 two counties of the State of Virginia which 
 are in a degree typical of the other regions 
 involved in the Civil War. 
 
 It is evident, to begin with, that the loss 
 of nearly a million of young men largely of 
 superior social worth must involve a racial 
 
 2 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 injury to a country, both in its immediate 
 effects and in its influence on future heredity. 
 "Like the seed is the harvest/' Heredity runs 
 level, and the man who is left determines the 
 racial future of the nation. No one could 
 maintain on any grounds that such loss would 
 be racially beneficial, however the political 
 or social results of war may be estimated. 
 
 If this loss works racial hurt, as seems un- 
 deniable, even on the grounds of plain com- 
 mon sense, this effect should be patent now 
 after an interval of two generations. How- 
 ever hard it may be to trace these effects, it 
 will never be any easier in the future. No one 
 misses that which he has never had, and the 
 gaps of the past, however great, seem always 
 to be filled. The eugenic effects of the Civil 
 War constitute a matter of the highest impor- 
 tance, deserving of the most careful investiga- 
 tion, and no time in the future can be as 
 favorable as the present for this work. 
 
 In the War between the States, the losses, 
 3 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 North and South, were approximately equal. 
 These losses are usually estimated at about 
 700,000 men, divided in the proportion of 
 400,000 to 300,000. Counting all deaths due 
 directly to the war, this may be held to be an 
 underestimate, and for our purposes we may 
 assume one million not unequally divided. 
 This loss represented about two per cent of 
 the white population of the North and about 
 ten per cent of that of the South. Of the 
 colored or negro population no account is 
 taken in the present discussion. The South- 
 ern loss of human wealth was therefore five 
 times as heavy as in the North, and the re- 
 sults of this loss should be correspondingly 
 more evident. This is in fact the case, al- 
 though in certain Northern States, as Ver- 
 mont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, the loss 
 was almost as great relatively to the popula- 
 tion as in Virginia or Georgia. 
 
 This loss fell on the men of that part of 
 the community racially most valuable, the 
 4 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 young men between the ages of eighteen and 
 thirty-five. At least forty per cent of these in 
 the South died without issue. Even among 
 the Southern States this loss was unequally 
 distributed, Virginia and North Carolina ap- 
 parently suffering most. 1 Virginia and North 
 
 1 It is estimated that Virginia furnished approxi- 
 mately 165,000. There are no records of the killed 
 and wounded. North Carolina claims to have fur- 
 nished 133,905, of whom 42,000 were killed or 
 wounded. The number of voters in North Carolina 
 at this time was 115,000. The population of Vir- 
 ginia, according to the Census of 1860, was 1,596,- 
 318; of North Carolina, 992,622. A just comparison 
 demands a deduction from Virginia's population of 
 442,014, the population of West Virginia (after- 
 wards made a separate State) according to the 
 Census of 1870. The proportion of enlistments to 
 population thus remains about equal in Virginia and 
 North Carolina, approximately I to 7. A complete 
 estimate of the South's contribution in human values 
 requires recognition also of the Southern men who 
 fought on the Union side. According to Charles C. 
 Anderson 'Fighting by Southern Federals), "296,579 
 white soldiers living in the South and 137,676 col- 
 ored soldiers, and approximately 200,000 men living 
 in the North that were born in the South, making 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 Carolina were in the beginning opposed to 
 secession, to slavery, and to coercion alike. 
 From her strategic importance, Virginia 
 more than any other State bore the brunt of 
 the most persistent and most destructive of 
 the hard-fought campaigns. Both Virginia 
 and North Carolina were settled mainly by 
 the same British stock, many Scotch being 
 represented and in certain localities the 
 Pennsylvania Germans. The racial quality 
 throughout was high, and it may be assumed 
 to have been about equally high and as good 
 as the best in the United States or in the 
 world, at the time of the outbreak of the war. 
 A survey of the eugenic conditions of the 
 
 634,255 Southern soldiers," engaged on the Union 
 side. Of this number Virginia is said to have con- 
 tributed 37,791, white and colored. For aid in the 
 collection of these data we are indebted to Mr. John 
 S. Patton, Librarian, University of Virginia; Pro- 
 fessor Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Princeton Univer- 
 sity; and Mr. W. S. Burnley, Assistant Secretary r 
 Department Confederate Military Records, Rich- 
 mond, Virginia. 
 
 6 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 whole South would be a matter of years or 
 of a lifetime. In a single summer only a 
 preliminary survey could be made, and this 
 within a very restricted area. It was desired 
 to select some locality in a degree typical 
 where the original loss had been great and 
 where there was a minimum of modifying in- 
 fluences, such as emigration, immigration, 
 and the rise of manufacturing industries. 
 For such purposes we would seek (i) rela- 
 tively superior human stock; (2) relatively 
 heavy loss of life ; (3) relatively little change in 
 social and economic conditions ; and (4) rela- 
 tively little of emigration or of immigration. 
 Certain parts of Virginia and of Georgia 
 seemed to meet these requirements best. 
 Hence we began with an intensive study of 
 small districts to sift the evidence of the 
 theoretically inevitable deterioration due to 
 the loss of a large portion of the best young 
 blood of fifty years ago. 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 "SPOTTSYLVANIA COUNTY 
 
 In attempting to begin this intensive study 
 in Virginia the location first chosen was the 
 war-wasted county of Spottsylvania, which 
 borders on the historic rivers of Rappahan- 
 nock and Rapidan, containing the city of 
 Fredericksburg. Near this town is the scene 
 of bloody battles known as "the Wilder- 
 ness," this including Chancellorsville, Spott- 
 sylvania Court House, Salem Church, and 
 the "Bloody Angle" in the forest near 
 Spottsylvania. This county extends from its 
 hilly lands, known as Piedmont, to the level 
 river bottoms of the Tidewater district, and 
 it is fairly representative of both. The Pied- 
 mont district before the Civil War was a 
 region of small farms, largely tilled by their 
 owners, while the larger plantations of the 
 Tidewater were worked by slaves. But the 
 social and economic changes "in this region 
 tend to obscure the biological effects of the 
 8 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 war, and these bulk large in their^modifying 
 effect on the results of the war-waste of this 
 harassed region. It is hard to value these fac- 
 tors in comparison, and it was necessary to 
 minimize them as far as possible in order to 
 reach any degree of certainty. In all that 
 part ot Virginia east of the Blue Ridge, the 
 best part of the human element was found in 
 the life of the plantations. The war wholly 
 destroyed the plantation life. So complete 
 a social revolution unquestionably had an 
 enormous temporary effect upon the appar- 
 ent quality of the human stock, by reason of 
 its grave interference with proper environ- 
 ment for full development. Sons of men once 
 wealthy and highly educated grew up 
 without schooling. Whatever backwardness 
 might possibly obtain could almost equally 
 justly be attributed to lack of opportunity or 
 to deterioration of quality. The eastern part 
 of Virginia, in many respects so favorable for 
 our study, was in other regards quite un- 
 9 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 suited, for the further reason of a more severe 
 industrial devastation than was suffered by 
 any other section of the South. Moreover, 
 emigration after the war was here especially 
 prevalent. Biologic, industrial, economic, 
 and social factors are so intricately interre- 
 lated as to make isolation of one or the other 
 quite impossible; all these worked to some 
 extent an apparently like racial effect by sup- 
 pression of the best human stock. 
 
 ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY 
 
 In view of the above considerations, the 
 Shenandoah Valley, or its southward exten- 
 sion, the Valley of Virginia west of the Blue 
 Ridge, appeared to furnish the best point of 
 attack. Since the life here was mostly that of 
 the small farmer, home conditions were not 
 seriously disturbed by the war. Home "life 
 after the conflict remained almost exactly 
 what it was before. There were no serious 
 economic changes, for this is a farming region 
 10 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 with practically no industrialism, and there 
 had been little emigration or immigration. 
 The stock in the Valley of Virginia is less 
 English than east of the Blue Ridge, being 
 largely Scotch-Irish and German. 
 
 In this region the county of Rockbridge 
 seemed to meet conditions best, and in this 
 county, and especially in the county town of 
 Lexington, an investigation was attempted. 
 This town is the seat of the university, known 
 now as Washington and Lee, of which 
 Robert E. Lee became president after the 
 war, and of the Virginia Military Institute, 
 in which Thomas J. Jackson ("Stonewall") 
 was a professor. The people of this county 
 were in the beginning and are to this day 
 opposed to disunion, to slavery, and to co- 
 ercion alike. 
 
 COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA 
 
 Considerable work was also done in Cobb 
 County, Georgia, a rural district on the line 
 ii 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 of Sherman's march, and therefore laid waste 
 during the war. Most of our records from 
 this county are concerned with economic and 
 social conditions. 1 
 
 PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS 
 
 We began this investigation with certain 
 preliminary assumptions derived from the 
 general knowledge of the history of the Civil 
 War. These served as a scaffolding for our 
 work. They were (i) that the volunteers re- 
 presented a better human element than the 
 conscripts ; since these went first to the war, 
 eventually furnishing most of the leaders, 
 seeing longer service and exposed to greater 
 risks, they suffered the greatest loss ; (2) the 
 conscripts of the later period saw shorter 
 service, incurred less risk, and thus survived 
 more generally, to perpetuate their somewhat 
 inferior type; (3) there was a considerable 
 
 1 These will be elsewhere treated by Professor 
 Krehbiel. 
 
 12 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 body who were exempted on account of phy- 
 sical weakness or disability, as also some who 
 fled to the mountains, and thus were wholly 
 preserved and bred their poorer types ; (4) the 
 third generation now in existence comprises 
 representatives of the three types : survived 
 volunteers, survived conscripts, and desert- 
 ers and exempts. 
 
 VOLUNTEER AND CONSCRIPT 
 
 If the war in this section produced the effect 
 of a contra-selection, then the three grades 
 should still be evident among the present 
 generation, and there should be a relative 
 preponderance of mediocrity. We were for- 
 tunate in finding very complete records of 
 the military companies from Rockbridge 
 County. These showed who were the volun- 
 teers, who the conscripts, and who had de- 
 serted. However, there does not seem to exist 
 anywhere a list of exemptions for disability. 
 We were frequently told that there were no 
 13 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 such: everybody went to the war, the weak 
 and sick as well as the strong; and frequently 
 the weak and consumptive, we were assured, 
 were greatly improved by the outdoor life 
 and military discipline. Nor, it is claimed, 
 were there any " cowards/' But it was thus 
 possible to compare the descendants of certain 
 selected volunteers with those of conscripts, 
 and both with those of deserters. However, 
 it was soon discovered that our first assump- 
 tion was too sweeping; as a class the volun- 
 teers were not notably superior to the con- 
 scripts, and for these reasons : the volunteers 
 were largely young men who had relatively 
 slight obligatory family ties, or who were in 
 training in military schools for just such ser- 
 vice. Moreover, when the calls for volunteers 
 came, in a certain family of several sons, the 
 father and all but one son would respond, one 
 remaining to care for the farm and the 
 family. When conscription came the remain- 
 ing son also went; but he was not by any 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 means necessarily inferior to his father or his 
 volunteer brothers. Again, there was a very 
 considerable body of good men who were op- 
 posed to war as a settlement of political 
 questions, who were not in sympathy with 
 the Southern cause, or at any rate saw no- 
 thing in the contest which appealed to them 
 to the extent of making them willing to risk 
 their Hives. These men did not volunteer, 
 and at last they became "conscripts." While 
 they probably in many instances made less 
 serviceable soldiers by reason of their con- 
 victions, they were nevertheless of good 
 human stock, sometimes of the best, and 
 their offspring are of no lesser quality than 
 those of volunteers. 
 
 THE DESERTER 
 
 For this reason the distinction between 
 volunteer and conscript, from the standpoint 
 of racial quality, is largely spurious. The 
 same is true with respect to the second as- 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 sumption, namely, that deserters were of in- 
 ferior quality to the others. Some of these, , 
 of course, fled to the mountains and remained 
 there. It did not seem practicable to us to 
 attempt to trace their progeny. Their eu- 
 genic status thus remains unknown. But we 
 possess certain facts which show that desert- 
 ers were at least not as a class cowardly and 
 racially inferior. In a certain company the 
 names of five deserters were recorded. The 
 captain of this company is still alive, and de- 
 scribed to us the quality of these men and the 
 causes for desertion. In no case was the 
 cause such as to indicate inferior quality. 
 The five deserters were fully up to the average 
 at least; only the pressure or temptation in 
 their case was uncommon. For example, 
 while passing through Chambersburg, Penn- 
 sylvania, one man was met by his sweetheart, 
 who persuaded him to leave the company. 
 We will not say that he was of "inferior 
 quality" because deaf to military duty when 
 16 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 love called so unexpectedly. Again, some of 
 the superior quality deserted because they 
 sympathized more with the Union side, or 
 saw nothing worth risking life for, or were 
 opposed to war itself for "conscience' sake/' 
 But the vast majority of desertions came late 
 in the war on the march from Richmond to 
 Appomattox Court House, when most men 
 realized that all hope was gone, and when 
 their duty to their neglected families seemed 
 to have prior claim. Some of these desertions 
 on the way to Appomattox were occasioned 
 at sight of home or family. The man to whom 
 family ties make so overmastering an appeal 
 is not of "inferior quality"! In short, there 
 being no "cowards" to mention, all as a class 
 were of fairly equal quality, volunteer, con- 
 script, and "deserter." Such differences as 
 existed lay merely in circumstances and not 
 in innate quality. 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 THE MILITARY COMPANIES 
 
 It is commonly believed that the martial 
 spirit was especially strong among the young 
 men of the South in 1861, and that this fact, 
 with the accompanying desire for glory, was 
 a large factor in bringing on the war. There 
 were in fact many military companies then 
 existing, a number much greater than at 
 present, and some men in these were 
 doubtless influenced by the easy glories of the 
 Mexican War. The war song, "Maryland/* 
 calls on 
 
 "Ringgold's spirit for the fray: 
 With Watson's blood at Monterey: 
 With fearless Lowe and dashing May"; 
 
 and is otherwise reminiscent of this unfortun- 
 ate episode in our history. There is no doubt 
 that such companies existed in number, but 
 mainly among the young aristocrats of the 
 plantations and of the towns, and the great 
 rural population of the South was little influ- 
 18 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 enced by them. These companies enlisted, al- 
 most bodily, at the beginning of the war, and 
 their training had some effect in the early 
 victories of the South. But their purpose, on 
 the whole, was social rather than military, 
 and their influence may easily be exaggerated. 
 
 STATISTICAL EXACTNESS IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 As we had expected in the beginning, it 
 soon became evident that no mathematical 
 estimate or rigid calculation of racial loss was 
 possible. But it was still practicable to secure 
 approximate results by less direct methods. 
 We took advantage of every opportunity to 
 interview representative men, and especially 
 veterans of the war, on the questions at issue. 
 From hundreds of these, valuable informa- 
 tion was gleaned. These conversations were 
 crystallized into a set of thirty propositions 
 which were one after another to be tested. 
 These propositions, usually in the words of 
 some thinking veteran, were put into the 
 19 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 form of a questionnaire and sent broadcast 
 over the South to the surviving Confederate 
 officers and other men of intelligence, for 
 comment and criticism. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF OPINION 
 
 In the remaining pages we attempt as a 
 preliminary step toward further investiga- 
 tion to analyze the answers and comments 
 of fifty-five of the answers received, laying 
 especial stress on those who have been vitally 
 interested spectators of the war itself, as well 
 as of much that immediately preceded and 
 all that has meanwhile transpired. Our best 
 thanks are due these Confederate heroes for 
 their painstaking efforts to help us in our 
 attempt honestly to verify the final and most 
 intimate argument against war, namely, that 
 it robs a country of its fundamental asset, its 
 best young citizenship, the potential ances- 
 tors of the "thoroughbreds" of the coming 
 generation. 
 
 20 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 In the answers to our questions there was 
 a wealth of information that lies outside 
 the immediate scope of our quest, necessarily 
 frequently impassioned, sometimes with nar- 
 row perspective, but always sincere, frank, 
 and charitable. We have thus received here a 
 glimpse of the spirit of the Old South such as 
 we could never have derived from book or 
 lecture. One is most profoundly impressed, 
 as one reads these lengthy inspired com- 
 ments, with the fact of unutterable loss in the 
 slaughter of the million of similar souls of 
 knightly spirits before they could leave their 
 princely stamp on human issue. In the fol- 
 lowing analysis we purposely state largely 
 the bare facts, stripped of all explanatory 
 detail and sentiment. The assenting replies 
 are frequently worded: "true, as a general 
 proposition/ 5 or "true, generally speaking/' 
 By means of the longer quotations, selected 
 from the more prominent contributors, an at- 
 tempt is made also to present both sides of 
 21 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 the argument concerning the various phases 
 of the subject under discussion, in every case 
 indicating the position held by the majority. 
 We may say that the opinions of only the 
 obviously thoughtful, however radical, of our 
 correspondents have been incorporated in 
 this study. The tentative propositions are 
 numbered serially, and our final conclusions 
 briefly summed up at the end. 
 
 j. The leading young men of the South were 
 a part of select companies of militia and 
 these companies were the first to enlist 
 
 From this statement only two dissent, and 
 several approve with slight qualifications. 
 One explains that while these companies were 
 formed of leading young men, they neverthe- 
 less did not contain the majority of them. 
 "Not all or even a majority of leading young 
 men were in the militia companies when the 
 war came on. Most of them were engaged in 
 private business such as planting, mercan- 
 
 22 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 tile, and professional pursuits, etc. That class 
 first volunteered." Another says that there 
 were not many such companies at the begin- 
 ning of the war, only six in North Caro- 
 lina, for example, but were rapidly formed 
 after the opening of the war. We are re- 
 minded also that this was equally true of the 
 North. Here* however, the relative propor- 
 tion of these leading young men to the whole 
 number of the populations was so small as to 
 make a much less serious impression upon 
 future generations. Moreover, in the North 
 they did not represent so large a proportion of 
 individual families as in the South. A general 
 comment is made that, "This is perhaps true 
 of the towns and cities of the South; but the 
 population of the South was overwhelmingly 
 rural, and in the country districts there were 
 few organized militia companies (correspond- 
 ing to the National Guard of to-day) . In the 
 country, the volunteers came from the unor- 
 ganized militia, without regard to military 
 23 
 
WAITS AFTERMATH 
 
 training or social position. Speaking in gen- 
 eral terms, the infantry volunteers came in 
 largest part from the non-slaveholding class, 
 while the cavalry commands were recruited 
 largely from the slaveholding class men 
 who were able to equip themselves for mounted 
 service. However, there were many cases 
 where horses were given by men of wealth to 
 cavalrymen who were unable to mount 
 themselves. 
 
 2. The flower of the people went into the war 
 at the beginning, and of these a large part 
 died before the end 
 
 This thesis received unanimous assent. 
 One contributor places the deaths at forty 
 per cent of the enlistment. The relative seri- 
 ousness from a racial standpoint of so great a 
 war mortality depends upon whether it repre- 
 sented a large or small percentage of the total 
 male portion of individual families. The per- 
 centage was frequently very large; in some 
 24 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 instances practically total. For example, the 
 
 family of D (Virginia) consisted of five 
 
 sons, all of whom went to the war. Four of 
 these were killed and one died of typhoid 
 fever directly after the war. One had married 
 and had one child and one grandchild, both 
 females, both now dead. A Georgia family of 
 six sons lost three in the war. One of the sur- 
 vivors left a large family, but a son born dur- 
 ing the war has "always been a weakling 
 physically the 'runt' of the family." This 
 son attributes his weakness to the damaged 
 vitality of his father by reason of the war, 
 ch left him invalided the remainder of his 
 
 life. A Virginia family of G contributed 
 
 seven soldiers (brothers or cousins), five of 
 whom were killed and the other two wounded. 
 
 Mr. N had thirty kinsmen in the war. 
 
 About one quarter of these were killed. He 
 had also three brothers in the army, two of 
 whom were killed. "About twenty per cent 
 of the first men enlisted pulled through to the 
 25 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 end. In each company most of the men were 
 kin and recruited from their kinfolk." " When 
 
 the war began Mr. C (of superb stock) 
 
 was a lad of nineteen. Of twenty-six officers 
 of the battalion he is now the sole survivor. 
 That class of people is bound to disappear. 
 But all that did not take to drink have done 
 well since the war/' A certain Georgia com- 
 pany of infantry numbering one hundred and 
 nine members, the best blood of Georgia, suf- 
 fered a fifty per cent loss including two cap- 
 tains. The University of Virginia went into 
 the war almost as a body, and suffered a 
 heavy mortality. Of the one hundred men 
 who went from Liberty Hall (now Washing- 
 ton and Lee University) only three now sur- 
 vive. Of ninety men in a certain company 
 every one of them was hit in the battle of 
 Gettysburg. During the war only three old 
 men and boys under sixteen were left in 
 
 F , A County. Of the students of the 
 
 University of North Carolina between 1850 
 26 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 and 1862, eight hundred and forty-two, or 
 fifty-seven per cent, were in the Confederate 
 army, three hundred and twelve, or thirty- 
 four per cent, were killed or died in service. 
 A certain captain tells us that the regiment 
 to which his company belonged "contained 
 the best young men the country afforded. 
 The great bulk of these were lost. Just as 
 soon as we lost that type of man our cause 
 was lost. These men could not be replaced/' 
 In consequence of the reversed selection 
 which ensued, "the young men of to-day are 
 not of the same caliber and high type as those 
 of Civil War days/' 
 
 "Certainly/' remarks a contributor, "but 
 the 'flower of the people' do not by any 
 means represent the most desirable class either 
 from the point of view of eugenics or from the 
 
 int of view of economics. No one doubts, 
 .owever, that it is to the 'flower of the 
 eople ' that we must look for advancement in 
 
 e arts and sciences, and for the advance- 
 27 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 ment in general racial culture. An aristo- 
 cratic class is the continually vanishing pre- 
 cipitate from the solution represented by the 
 great mass of humanity. As the families 
 which compose the aristocratic class disap- 
 pear, new families from the grades beneath 
 continually rise up and take their places. 
 The children of the aristocratic classes are 
 few in number, more or less weak, and often 
 defective physically, averaging about twenty- 
 five per cent less in weight at birth than the 
 children of 'the people/ with small and slen- 
 der bones, small hands and feet, almost al- 
 ways defective dentition, etc., though power- 
 ful mentally; and an abnormal percentage is 
 female ; the males possess a very high degree 
 of sterility. I cannot see how any race can be 
 more than temporarily affected in cultural 
 development by the entire removal of its aris- 
 tocratic class ; in two or three generations it 
 replaces itself from the remaining elements of 
 the population/' It must be objected, how- 
 28 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 ever, that the "eudemic" doctrine, or drift 
 attitude, expounded in the last quotation, 
 entirely ignores the hereditary aspect of the 
 civically significant and valuable human 
 qualities. 
 
 3. War took only the physically fit; the physi- 
 cally unfit remained behind 
 
 This thesis failed to elicit assent from seven 
 contributors. Three desire some qualifica- 
 tions. One suggests the substitution of 
 "chiefly" for "only." Thus modified, it 
 would probably be unanimously approved. 
 Another suggests that there should be added 
 "also the physically unfit, but morally fit." 
 In short, in certain counties everybody be- 
 tween the ages of sixteen and sixty enlisted 
 during the last years of the war. "Partly 
 true," says one; "before the war had closed, 
 all classes of people were participating in it. 
 The junior reserves had been called out and 
 many boys between sixteen and twenty years 
 29 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 of age from families of all kinds lost their 
 lives/' "Owing to the exemptions provided 
 by the conscript laws passed by the Confeder- 
 ate Congress there were many who were 
 physically fit for military service who re- 
 mained behind for illustration, those who 
 owned or controlled a certain number of 
 able-bodied slaves. Hence the frequent asser- 
 tion made in the South by the non-exempt 
 that it was 'the rich man's war and the poor 
 man's fight/" 
 
 4. Conscripts, though in many cases the equd 
 of volunteers, were on ike average inferior 
 to the latter both in physical and moral 
 qualities and made poorer soldiers 
 
 This fails of approval by only six. A num- 
 ber stress moral inferiority, but deny any 
 physical difference. We are also informed 
 that there were no "conscript companies/' 
 As conscripts arrived they were apportioned 
 among volunteer and seasoned companies. 
 30 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 That the conscripts frequently made poorer 
 soldiers is generally admitted. But the rea- 
 sons given are various. The more important 
 are that they had little or no enthusiasm, fre- 
 quently feeling that they were fighting for the 
 perpetuation of a condition which was bane- 
 ful to them as small farmers. Moreover, they 
 were more largely married men, and in conse- 
 quence more discontented away from home. 
 Good soldiery is as largely a spiritual as a 
 physical matter. The statement that "the 
 men who did not go into the war and had to 
 be conscripted were the worst the South had" 
 seems a little too strong. The comments are 
 also made that "conscripts, being of a lower 
 type than the volunteers, undoubtedly pos- 
 sessed a higher average of fertility and were 
 therefore of value in providing in subsequent 
 generations the laborers and tradesmen upon 
 which the economic strength of any commun- 
 ity ultimately depends. You must not lose 
 sight of the fact that the conscript regiments 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 were not nearly so well officered as the volun- 
 teer regiments, which accounts for some of 
 the difference between them. It takes first 
 class officers to drive conscripts, while almost 
 any one can lead volunteers"; and, "Many 
 men of family who did not volunteer for ser- 
 vice, but afterwards fell within the provisions 
 of the conscript laws, were in every sense the 
 equals of the earlier volunteers, the young 
 men without families, and perhaps after their 
 enforced enlistment made just as good sol- 
 diers." 
 
 5. Considerable numbers of men fled to the 
 hills and other places to escape conscrip- 
 tion ("bushmen"), and others deserted 
 from the ranks and joined them 
 
 This proposition received the unqualified 
 approval of less than half. The consensus of 
 opinion is that the number of deserters was 
 negligibly small. The admission is made, 
 however, by a conscript officer, that it is 
 32 
 
6. The volunteer companies, having enlisted 
 at the beginning of the war, lost more heav- 
 ily than the companies of conscripts which 
 entered the war later. (" Those who 'fit* 
 the most survived the least. 99 ) The deserters 
 suffered practically no loss of life, however 
 much inconvenience 
 
 This proposition was denied by only one, 
 and questioned by another. The latter re- 
 marks that it " looks reasonable, but will not 
 bear verification. The men who were caught 
 
 33 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 in exposed places of battle suffered." The 
 last sentence of the thesis cannot be ques- 
 tioned. But when one recalls the carnage at 
 the foot of Marye's Heights, in the Bloody 
 Angle at Spottsylvania Court House, and at 
 the battle of the Crater, as well as the fact 
 that the heavier fighting took place in the 
 later years of the war, and that there were no 
 "conscript companies," it needs qualifica- 
 tion to an extent robbing it of most of its sig- 
 nificance. As to the original secessionists, 
 few of whom went to the war, it is main- 
 tained that only one or two made good sol- 
 diers. "They were mostly politicians or 
 simply agitators." Still their children are 
 "just as good as those of the volunteers. 
 Many of these were professional men, for 
 which account they were excused from ser- 
 vice. Also most of them were close to the age 
 of exemption. As a rule the laboring class 
 made extremely good soldiers, and contrib- 
 uted few 'bushmen/ Conscripts were gener- 
 34 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 [y men of large families fully dependent 
 upon them for support. They were perfectly 
 loyal, but did not feel that they could leave 
 their families. All men who went to the war 
 were equally good." 
 
 From a different section we have the fol- 
 lowing from the grandson of the leading citi- 
 zen before the war: "G at the outbreak 
 
 of the war was a rich, intelligent, and aristo- 
 cratic place, which cannot be said of the place 
 to-day. All the families were broken up after 
 the war, either through death or emigration. 
 Young men had to go elsewhere to make a 
 living. The best men were killed in the war. 
 These men volunteered and were exposed to 
 dangers of all sorts. The poorer types had to 
 be conscripted and most of them took such 
 good care of themselves in time of danger 
 that they returned. The present generation 
 is not up to the Civil War standard. There 
 were twenty or twenty-five young men of my 
 generation who distinguished themselves and 
 35 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 were a credit to the community and the na- 
 tion. I can think of only three of the present 
 generation who have brought credit to them- 
 selves or the community. The same can be 
 said of M , a place with which I am fa- 
 miliar." It is further urged that "This dis- 
 tinction between volunteer and conscript 
 companies is hardly justified. Most men who 
 were forced into the service by the operation 
 of the conscript laws took time by the fore- 
 lock "and enlisted in previously existing 
 volunteer commands." 
 
 7. The result of this was that the men of the 
 highest character and quality bore the brunt 
 of the war and lost more heavily than men 
 of inferior quality. This produced a change 
 in the balance of society by reducing the 
 percentage of the better types without a cor- 
 responding reduction of the less desirable 
 types; a condition which was projected into 
 the next generation because the inferiors 
 
 36 
 

 WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 lived to have progeny and the others did 
 not 1 
 
 This receives a bare majority of "ayes/ 5 
 In view of what was said under number 6, the 
 criticism, "too general," and, "statement a 
 little too strong/ 5 seems justifiable. However, 
 the following by a soldier of exceptional intel- 
 ligence and high social and business attain- 
 ment deserves quoting: "The best men were 
 killed off by the war, causing a deterioration 
 of human stock, but it is impossible to tell 
 the extent of this deterioration. The fellows 
 who held back raised inferior stock. No de- 
 serter of the Army of Virginia has ever 
 
 1 Thus in the Liberty Hall Washington and 
 Lee University Volunteers, a company of the 
 Stonewall Brigade, from Lexington, Virginia, 
 forty-eight of the seventy-six who were alumni of 
 Washington and Lee University lost their lives or 
 were seriously wounded in the thirty-two battles 
 from Manassas to Appomattox. Of the one hundred 
 and six non-alumni in the same company forty men 
 were lost. 
 
 37 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 amounted to anything. Twenty years after 
 the war, the men who had fought through the 
 war had been helped to their feet again, but 
 not by the men who had stayed out of the 
 war. The only decent thing in the South is 
 that which came out of the Southern army." 
 Another says, the best of to-day are the de- 
 scendants of the aristocrats who adapted 
 themselves to changed conditions. And an- 
 other asks, "What shall we say about the 
 large number of people in Virginia, Tennes- 
 see, Kentucky, Maryland, and other States, 
 who were opposed to the war from principle, 
 and refused to take up arms against their 
 'flag' until they were drafted? No "aristo- 
 crats 5 on earth are their superiors. They are 
 themselves the real aristocrats." It is ob- 
 jected that the statement is "hardly justifi- 
 able. It was notorious that the cavalry 
 commands, recruiting largely from the 'best 
 blood' of the South, suffered less in propor- 
 tion to numbers than the infantry commands, 
 
 38 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 made up in largest part of those not equally 
 favored by fortune/' 
 
 8. "Eighty per cent of the best blood of S 
 
 was lost in the war! 9 "/ believe in blood 
 
 I in men as I do in horses" 
 Here the sentiment wins full assent. One 
 clines, however, to accept it as true of men 
 in the same degree as of horses, "except as 
 blood determines environment and tradi- 
 tions/' A majority deny that the percentage 
 of loss was as high as eighty per cent. The 
 highest admitted among the objectors is 
 sixty per cent. One suggests that the sen- 
 tence should read "constructive ability" 
 rather than "best blood/' "On the whole, it 
 is no doubt true that the upper classes of 
 Southern society suffered losses of dispropor- 
 tionate severity in warfare. It must, how- 
 ever, not be forgotten that the constitution 
 of Southern society, as of other aristocratic 
 organizations in history, was largely artifi- 
 39 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 cial. I do not say with certainty that the 
 Southern aristocracy had an influence be- 
 yond its merits. But I think it was true to a 
 considerable extent that it contained ele- 
 ments no longer worthy of their influential 
 position. Slavery was injurious to practical 
 efficiency, and as a result of it many sons of 
 well-to-do families were lazy and dissipated, 
 drinking being prevalent throughout the 
 South. On the other hand, there was in the 
 lower strata of Southern society a great 
 amount of native ability suffering to be liber- 
 ated, and to a large extent this was liberated, 
 not so much by the war as by the social reor- 
 ganization which ensued upon it. In that 
 respect the war had somewhat the effect 
 which the period of the Revolution and of 
 Napoleon had in France, the 'carriere 
 ouverte aux talents'. The political control 
 of the South during the past twenty years 
 seems to have been mainly in the hands of 
 persons whose fathers or grandfathers were 
 49 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 of the class that had one slave apiece or no 
 slaves. Often they have been coarse but vig- 
 orous persons, though not always with capa- 
 city for growth nor with a generally high 
 character. Now in industrial life the leader- 
 ship of such persons has been much more 
 beneficial, I imagine, than would have been 
 that of the scions of the old aristocracy, who 
 often seem rather helpless persons, with 
 more refinement than vigor. These things of 
 which I have spoken are not so much results 
 of war as of this particular war and the crum- 
 bling of the old aristocracy." A critic's com- 
 ment is that "the idle and the thriftless 
 the ne'er-do-wells volunteered quite 
 as promptly as the 'bloods'; and bullets 
 and camp fevers were no respecters of 
 persons." 
 
 p. " We can only judge of those who died by the 
 success of others" "We should have 
 accomplished a great deal more in these fifty 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 years if we could have had the help of the 
 men who fell in the war" 
 
 This thesis evoked much comment. It gets 
 a bare majority of affirmative replies. One 
 calls it " true almost beyond comprehension " ; 
 another disagrees utterly, maintaining that 
 "war stimulated to better manhood/' One 
 remarks that "no man can fail to believe in 
 blood who has lived fifty years "; another 
 holds that the Confederate martyrs "did 
 more good for the South by their heroic death 
 in the cause of a great principle than they 
 would have done if alive"; and still another, 
 "the force of their example has done won- 
 ders." 
 
 Half of the best were killed. The South 
 suffered immensely from the weakening of 
 the breed, but only meager records were pre- 
 served and no authoritative estimate can yet 
 be made. Virginia had 165,000 men in the 
 field; of these only 10,000 are now living. 
 42 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 There is no record of the lost, "we can only 
 judge of those who died by the success of 
 others/' "There is, of course, a good deal of 
 nonsense about this talk of blood, in the 
 South, as elsewhere/' we are warned. " In the 
 North and in the South alike, with very few 
 exceptions, the American nation in its first two 
 centuries was composed by transplanting to 
 this country a large section of the European 
 middle class, with a little of the dregs and 
 almost none of the aristocracy. 1 The plain 
 people rose to be aristocrats in the South by 
 acquiring property of one sort, just as in more 
 recent years they have risen to be ' society 
 people' in the North by acquiring property 
 of another sort ; nevertheless, it in many ways 
 does people good to suppose that they are of 
 high descent when they are not. I am accus- 
 tomed to say to the young people around me 
 
 1 See Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, by 
 Professor Thomas J. Wertenbaker: Michie Co., 
 Charlottesville, Virginia, 1912. 
 
 43 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 that the American nation consists of two 
 sorts of people, those who are descended 
 from lower middle-class English and are 
 aware of it, and those who are descended 
 from lower middle-class English people and 
 are not aware of it. The latter feel much bet- 
 ter." One admits that "the standard of the 
 younger generation is not up to that of the 
 war, but this fact is not necessarily charge- 
 able to the war. There is undoubted truth in 
 the theory. The percentage of loss among 
 the higher classes was greater than among 
 the lower and there has been a lowering of 
 the level of manhood. However, the change 
 is largely due to changed economic conditions. 
 It is impossible to measure the loss of these 
 young men." "There is only one opinion on 
 this question. It is true and we would have 
 recuperated more rapidly. Their deaths are 
 an irreparable loss to the South." "Of 
 course, in every sparsely settled country 
 where the point of 'diminishing returns' has 
 44 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 not been reached the loss of life told more 
 seriously upon economic progress than in an 
 older region more densely populated." 
 
 10. "Widows of soldiers suffered great hard- 
 ships and most of them never remarried; 
 the death-rate among them was unusually 
 high for the first ten or fifteen years after 
 the war" 
 
 This is denied by a sole contributor, who 
 calls it "romancing." Several question its 
 strict accuracy, suggesting that "a large per- 
 centage" or "many" would more nearly ex- 
 press the actual fact than "most." "There 
 can be little doubt but that the stress and 
 strain of war, with its untold privations, 
 told heavily in shortening the lives of 
 
 women." 
 
 II. " The sweethearts of many a victim of the 
 war never married; with the elevation of the 
 middle class and the lack of men of their 
 45 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 own class many girls of the aristocracy 
 married men beneath them in station" 
 
 This receives less hearty approval, only a 
 fifty per cent affirmation. It would undoubt- 
 edly have met better success if "some" were 
 substituted for "many." However, the chief 
 dissatisfaction seems to be with the con- 
 cluding clause. The comments are, "imag- 
 inary"; "very few Southern women mar- 
 ried 'down'"; and, "station is not synony- 
 mous with strain." "It is true that women 
 of culture, born of the planter class, have 
 married men who came up from the non- 
 slave-owning class strong men who bal- 
 anced the vigor that comes from manual 
 labor on the farm against the culture of the 
 upper class." However, after due allowance 
 for qualifications the general approval of the 
 last two propositions answers the frequent 
 criticism of the position that war works "re- 
 versed selection " through the destruction of a 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 large quota of superior males, namely, that 
 this takes no account of the females of similar 
 quality who are subject to no such destruc- 
 tion: these frequently do not marry, or are 
 compelled to marry poorer strains. The lat- 
 ter result, however, is far from a racially un- 
 mitigated evil, regarded in a broad and demo- 
 cratic sense. 
 
 12. " The farmers are now of a lower type than 
 before the war" * 
 
 This proposition is very emphatically 
 denied by many, and objected to by most. It 
 is undoubtedly mistakenly worded. I gather 
 from the replies and comments that the state- 
 ment is true only if comparison is implied be- 
 tween the ante-bellum planters and pres- 
 ent-day farmers. If actual farmers are meant 
 to be compared, there remains still only a 
 meager assent. "The "poor whites' as a rule 
 are making good. They, too, are largely good 
 
 1 Opinion of a Virginia attorney. 
 
 47 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 stuff. Their faults are largely those of lack of 
 education. With proper training they de- 
 velop efficiency. The middle class in general 
 are doing better than the sons of slavehold- 
 ers." We are told also, "This is an error. 
 The small farmer of to-day is immeasurably 
 superior to the small farmer of the old regime 
 and as for the "planters/ perhaps honors 
 are fairly even between those of the two 
 
 eras/' 
 
 13. "All over ike State the class of men attend- 
 ing courts does not measure up in intelli- 
 gence or in ideals with those before the 
 
 war" 
 
 This proposition is left untouched by a 
 number. It wins assent from about half. It 
 is questioned by some ; vehemently denied by 
 others and as emphatically affirmed by a 
 few. One man who was on the bench for 
 thirteen years remarks that there is "no 
 
 1 Opinion of a Virginia judge. 
 
 4 8 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 question of the truth of this." "I think/' 
 says another, "that any judge in New Eng- 
 land would unqualifiedly make exactly the 
 same statement, and so would any of the 
 older magistrates in British Guiana or in the 
 West Indies/' "Far below it," says a third. 
 "My observation as a lawyer for many years 
 has caused me to remark about it." 
 
 14. " The public men of the South do not mea- 
 sure up to those of old times" 
 
 This statement is given lengthy considera- 
 tion in the comments. It is approved by 
 about half, in some instances unreservedly, 
 in others with qualifications. The most fre- 
 quent reply is that the same is true of the 
 entire country, "commercialism absorbing 
 the nation's strength that formerly went to 
 public life." In proof of this proposition, one 
 recalls the fact that the South furnished nine 
 out of the fifteen ante-bellum Presidents. 
 One accounts for the Southern dearth of 
 49 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 public men of towering ability on the basis of 
 negro suffrage ; and one reminds us of a lack 
 of superior statesmen throughout the world ; 
 e.g., England. An explanation of the appar- 
 ent fact is attempted by several on the 
 ground that there are now so many public 
 men of cardinal ability as to render their 
 existence commonplace ; again, that the stim- 
 ulus for superior efforts is lacking, and that if 
 the occasion demanded, giants would loom 
 up from among the "common people/' The 
 war had little to do with "this numerical 
 degradation of public men/' according to a 
 Tennessee correspondent. "It is the moral 
 depravity of the whole body politic ; a univer- 
 sal subsidence of the morals of the electorate, 
 produced by the money of the vastly rich. 
 This is true of the whole country from Maine 
 to California, and from the Lakes to the 
 Gulf." 
 
 " Intelligence is not identical with mental 
 superiority, and social standing certainly is 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 not so," says another. "There are a number 
 of assertions that in the Civil War the better 
 men were killed and the worse survived. In- 
 asmuch as in most wars losses by exposure, 
 disease, and neglected wounds amount, all 
 told, to far more than losses by immediate 
 destruction in battle, there is a very im- 
 portant way in which the strong tend to sur- 
 vive and the weak to perish. Those who at 
 bottom have the best constitutions are less 
 likely to be carried away by other influences 
 than the bullets that kill or mortally injure. 
 Assertions as to whiskey rather favor the 
 idea that an undesirable element was carried 
 away when the highest class perished in 
 greater numbers than the middle class." 
 "The public men of the South, judging from 
 the pages of history alone, are superior to the 
 "hot-headed/ so-called aristocrats before the 
 war. The public men of the South are the 
 equal of the public men of any other section 
 of the country." " Men like John T. Morgan, 
 
 Si 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 of Alabama, L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, 
 and Ben H. Hill, of Georgia, were the peers 
 of any group of ante-bellum Southern lead- 
 ers ; but it is true that they belonged as much 
 to the old regime as the new, for they grew 
 to manhood before the War between the 
 States." Compared with those of fifty years 
 ago, the public men of to-day are inferior, 
 according to one correspondent, "in intelli- 
 gence, broad views, high sense of honor, char- 
 ity, and capacity to conduct governmental 
 affairs." "There are men in the South to-day 
 as wise and efficient as ever in former times, 
 but the number of strong men is relatively 
 fewer." 
 
 75. "After the war the best of the middle class 
 farm managers and commercial men 
 rose to equality with the remnants of the old 
 aristocracy" 
 
 This is generally approved, though em- 
 phatically denied by four. One comments 
 
 52 
 

 WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 thus: "They did not have to rise; they sim- 
 ply asserted themselves." "Why should n't 
 they?" asks another, "they represent the 
 class from which the aristocracy had been 
 continually replenished; the process of re- 
 plenishment was temporarily accelerated, 
 that is all." "There were many cases where 
 the non-slave-owning 'overseers' became the 
 owners of the plantations which they had 
 formerly superintended for the slave-owner," 
 explains another. "They understood the 
 management of labor better than the former 
 owner, and grew rich, in some cases, as the 
 former owner became impoverished." 
 
 16. " The Civil War destroyed the cream and 
 stirred up the dregs" 
 
 This is not approved. Many remark that 
 it is "too sweeping" or "too strong." This is 
 undoubtedly true. It is denied by a number 
 of exceptional thoughtfulness and of special 
 opportunity for becoming conversant with 
 53 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 the facts. There is probably more than a 
 grain of truth in the assertion that "the "poor 
 whites' of the South have never had justice 
 done them. They are much better raw ma- 
 terial than is generally supposed/' "The 
 writer of the above [i.e., statement number 
 16] is an extremist/' is the comment of one, 
 "and the true historian would do well to avoid 
 taking him seriously." 
 
 77. " The men who got themselves killed were 
 the better men" ^ 
 
 "True, good men of all classes were killed, 
 but no one class had a monopoly of getting 
 killed." 
 
 18. "The present deterioration of human 
 qualities is due to lack of schooling rather 
 than to impoverishment of blood" 
 
 As to this, few admit any deterioration in 
 
 1 Compare with this the old French proverb, 
 "A la guerre ce sont toujours les memes qui se font 
 
 54 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 human quality. Several attribute it equally 
 to impoverishment of blood and inferior kind 
 of schooling. One, a Confederate soldier and 
 still an influential teacher of youth, debits 
 deterioration to the overthrow of political 
 ideals and the loss of family and state 
 "pride." Another, of similar qualifications 
 and position, attributes it to "too much 
 schooling by girls." Still another blames 
 "bad newspapers." But the majority would 
 apparently more probably subscribe to the 
 opinion that "the Southern youth is better, 
 stronger, freer, and more aggressive than 
 ever" ; and that "the standards are as high as 
 ever in the world's history." A certain wo- 
 man who has been an intelligent spectator of 
 events in Virginia for the past sixty years, 
 admits a degeneration, physically, intellect- 
 ually, and morally, but attributes it to the 
 demoralization of the home, following the 
 breaking-up of plantation life. "There has 
 been no deterioration on the average" main- 
 55 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 tains one, "while there has been more than a 
 corresponding gain in the masses/' 
 
 19. "Loss of courage in face of financial 
 ruin was a greater damage than loss of 
 blood" 
 
 This is unanimously denied, questioned, or 
 very materially qualified. One will assent if 
 the word "financial" is changed to "consti- 
 tutional/' " Loss of spirit " is only considered 
 a very temporary influence. The most that 
 is granted is that it was a certain small factor. 
 The general opinion seems to be that "the 
 result of the war was only to stimulate the 
 people of the South to make more of them- 
 selves ; they met the situation strongly and 
 nobly/' Nevertheless, one remarks: "This 
 was the prevailing sentiment. I have known 
 good men to take to drink, give up all efforts 
 and die from trouble at their misfortunes, 
 saying, 'All is lost life is a burden/' 
 
 56 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 "Many of the planter class could not recover 
 from the blow dealt by the upheaval in the in- 
 dustrial system in which they were bred ; but 
 the above statement appears too strong/' is 
 still another comment. 
 
 20. "One element of deterioration came from 
 the people of the North who for commercial 
 reasons sought the conquered districts" 
 
 This is warmly approved by a few. By 
 most, the "carpet-bag" influence is evalu- 
 ated as "very temporary" and of "no im- 
 portance." "Here again we get a grain of 
 truth, but it is a half-truth. There was a 
 class of people who came from the North 
 whose presence was then, and has continued 
 to be, a blessing to the country. The one great 
 mistake of all, and the one which has done 
 more to affect the South in every way, was 
 the outrageous treatment of the people by 
 the ' carpet-baggers ' and the fanatics. The 
 giving of the ballot without qualification or 
 57 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 preparation to the negroes was a blunder 
 which has deepened into a crime. The negro 
 should have been made to earn his citizen- 
 ship." "This element was inconsequential, 
 except in politics, where its influence was 
 baleful beyond description in setting up the 
 'carpet-bag '-negro State Governments in the 
 South under the Reconstruction Acts of 
 Congress, which were bolstered up by federal 
 troops." 
 
 21. "Whiskey was the curse of the Southern 
 aristocrats" "The aristocratic failures 
 were mostly hard drinkers" 
 
 This is practically unanimously denied. 
 The frequent comment appears that whiskey 
 is a "general curse," not typical of section or 
 class. " Heredity kills an aristocracy as surely 
 as whiskey. There is no evidence that whis- 
 key was worse for the Southern aristocracy 
 than heredity has been for that of the 
 North," is the comment of one contributor. 
 
 58 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 22. "Cousin marriage (common in the higher 
 social circles in parts of the South) may 
 have been in some degree a harmful ele- 
 ment" 
 
 One correspondent affirms this most em- 
 phatically. However, it is almost unani- 
 mously denied or questioned. The general 
 opinion seems to be that it has been a negligi- 
 ble factor in determining racial conditions, 
 more prevalent in aristocratic communities, 
 but not confined to any particular section of 
 the country. But one says, "Yes, and their 
 offspring from my observation were physi- 
 cally and mentally very weak, they died 
 young, and many were consumptives." 
 
 23. Emigration has weakened the South as 
 much as war 
 
 This thesis also is generally questioned. 
 One sees an advantage in the Southern emi- 
 gration common immediately after the war, 
 in that it served to bring the Western and 
 59 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 Northern sections of the country into "closer 
 sympathy" with the South. The most that 
 can be admitted is that emigration was a 
 small contributory factor in the racial im- 
 poverishment of certain portions of the 
 South. Also, "the influence of foreigners 
 must have been equally important in reduc- 
 ing our standards with losses in the Civil 
 War/' "I think, judging from conditions in 
 the North, a vast deal more/' remarks one. 
 " For what emigration can do to a country, 
 look at Spain, which at the time of the dis- 
 covery of the American continent possessed 
 the finest people in the world. The Spanish 
 people are now getting upon their feet again, 
 but it has been a terrible struggle. I may add 
 that the reason that the Spanish race has not 
 done better in America is that they promptly 
 interbred with the far inferior native races, 
 and with the imported Africans; in other 
 words, they lost all of their really best blood 
 to America, where it became hopelessly di- 
 60 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 luted with blood of a very inferior quality." 
 "These young men of the South after the war 
 came West to enrich a vast area of country," 
 explains one. "Some regions, like Missouri, 
 Minnesota, California, Oregon, and so on, 
 appealed to these young men more than the 
 regions that, like Kansas and Iowa, had 
 fought in the Civil War. They went to 
 regions of the West that welcomed Southern 
 people, and gave a chance for success. Al- 
 though they broke with all Southern tradi- 
 tion as to business, these people were, so far 
 as my personal knowledge goes, gentlemen 
 always, born slaveholders, impoverished by 
 war, with education varying according to the 
 measure of mishaps." " Emigration has taken 
 from the South a large number of its best 
 men and women: those most positive and 
 aggressive in character, most energetic and 
 having most faith in their own ability." "It 
 is estimated that 235,000 natives of North 
 Carolina now live in other States." This 
 61 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 emigration began in 1850, and was greatest 
 from 1866 to 1870. 
 
 24. " The strong fell first in battle, but the weak 
 fell in camp; so that the balance remained 
 about the same 99 
 
 This is generally approved. It is denied by 
 seven, and questioned by six. One dismissed 
 the proposition with the word "Sophistry." 
 "The term 'strong' needs defining. It would 
 be better to say ' energetic/ though this does 
 not quite convey a truthful meaning. The 
 man who falls first in battle is the man of 
 restless disposition and often misdirected 
 energy; he, in a typical manifestation, is re- 
 presented by the so-called soldier of fortune. 
 If he stays at home he is likely to become a 
 destructive social element, a demagogue or 
 similar type. This kind of man, in times of 
 peace, is better as a dead hero than as a living 
 member of society. The better-balanced men 
 62 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 in the regiments, mentally and physically, 
 were those that survived, so that the last part 
 of the statement is correct. War is always 
 useful in, to a large degree, eliminating the 
 aggressive and destructive element in any 
 community. I believe that without an occa- 
 sional war the increase of this element (pro- 
 vided, of course, that they did not emigrate) 
 would quickly result in national decay, pre- 
 ceded by violent local outbreaks. War has 
 the great advantage of holding up before the 
 people and glorifying a well-balanced human 
 type, the soldier, to serve as a breeding 
 model for the women, like china eggs in a 
 henhouse. In times of peace the breeding 
 model is the man attached to the largest bank 
 account regardless of anything else, at least 
 in the older communities." "No," says an- 
 other, "one strong man was worth as a citi- 
 zen a dozen weak ones." 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 25. "Inestimable damage was done by the war 
 in the South by preventing men from secur- 
 ing a proper education" 
 
 This is denied by only four, and ques- 
 tioned by four. The idea is advanced by sev- 
 eral that the war "educated men," and that 
 "the necessity for working out their own 
 salvation was of more value than book- 
 learning, and made them men." "Unques- 
 tionably this is true of the upper classes. 
 Many boys and young men designed for 
 college courses were never able to take 
 them, being cut off by four years of war and 
 poverty afterward." 
 
 26. " The war could have been avoided if pa- 
 tience and good sense had been shown" 
 
 The comments on this thesis are most in- 
 teresting and varied. Those that agree are in 
 the small majority. The correspondent that 
 says, "No one can answer this intelligently" 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 is perhaps nearest the truth; or the one who 
 says this is "A proposition of too many sides 
 to be discussed here." We are reminded that 
 "Lincoln and Lee held practically the same 
 view; they were representative of a large and 
 influential element in the United States/' 
 The suggestion is made that there was needed 
 in addition a " reasonable respect for consti- 
 tutional rights." Disregard of constitutional 
 rights is a frequently recurring criticism in 
 this group of comments. The idea is ex- 
 pressed that "the seed was sown when the 
 Federal Constitution was adopted. It had to 
 come." One believes that "two Confederacies 
 would have been better than war and subju- 
 gation." The latter opinion is given weight 
 by inclusion of the fact of the enormous waste 
 of Southern manhood. "I do not agree with 
 what is written under this number. The 
 seeds of the Civil War were planted in the 
 Constitution of our Government. If slavery 
 had to be abolished, war was inevitable. This 
 
 65 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 institution was recognized and protected in 
 the organic law. The owners could not with 
 patience submit to its abolition or destruc- 
 tion, without remuneration, and remunera- 
 tion would could never have been made. 
 It was not a question of patience, but of 
 degradation and dishonor to submit to 
 taking this property without voluntary con- 
 sent of the owner, and for a just pecuniary 
 equivalent, was to become a nation of pol- 
 troons. Even if the loss to the South in hu- 
 man life, and in property, and the whole 
 train of evil results of this unhappy conflict, 
 could have been seen from the beginning, I 
 do not think "good sense 5 required or could 
 justify tame submission to the unthinkable 
 disgrace which was required. From the utili- 
 tarian standpoint I understand it can be 
 said it is no worse to submit to the inevitable 
 before the catastrophe than after all this 
 carnage and loss, and good sense would de- 
 mand the former. Not so! A man, or state, 
 66 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 or section, or nation without the spirit and 
 determination not to submit to injustice and 
 spoliation tamely, is worth preserving. No 
 single man or people is lowered in the estima- 
 tion of himself, or the balance of mankind, 
 for submission, no matter how hard the 
 terms, to that which by imperiling his life 
 and all that is near and dear to him, he could 
 not avert. With this sort of sentiment, our 
 exhausted well-nigh ruined condition, 
 can in a sense be retrieved ; but with no such 
 spirit, for that people there is no future 
 but degradation and pusillanimity/' "To 
 this my answer would be 'yes.' But it 
 seemed to be in the Eternal Counsels that 
 nothing but war would satisfy the nation, 
 North and South. Henry Clay's proposed 
 solution of the slavery question, about 1840, 
 involved an expenditure of twenty-five mil- 
 lions of dollars, spread over several decades 
 of years; and would have involved no breach 
 of peace ; would have caused no ill-will be- 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 tween North and South; and would have 
 left the whole situation better than it was at 
 the close of the Civil War, or, indeed, than it 
 is now. But North and South rejected the 
 Clay proposal or suggestion, and slavery was 
 abolished at the cost of at least five hundred 
 thousand of the best lives the nation had to 
 give, and the blotting-out of values North 
 and South to the amount of over ten thou- 
 sand millions of dollars/' "No power on 
 earth could have stopped it. The conflict 
 was inevitable." In her novel "Cease Firing," 
 Miss Mary Johnston, through her character 
 of Allan Gold, thus sums up this matter. 
 "What do I think? I think that we were 
 both right and both wrong, and that in the 
 beginning each side might have been more 
 patient and much wiser. Life and history, 
 right and wrong, and the minds of men look 
 out of more windows than we used to 
 think." 
 
 68 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 27. " The democratic equality of the high-born 
 and low-born in the camp was good for 
 both; the pampered sons were helped by the 
 democratic severity of their work, the ignor- 
 ant by contact with good manners and cul- 
 ture' 9 
 
 This is very intelligently and warmly dis- 
 puted by a number. The majority are in- 
 clined to qualify. Such effect was probably 
 very transitory. "No there was no asso- 
 ciation to bring about such a condition. 
 Education and refinement will always hold 
 high above ignorance and vulgarity. Mili- 
 tary training and service bring out the best 
 qualities and also develop the mean qualities 
 of a man." "Undoubtedly the war was a 
 strong educational force for the non-slave- 
 owning Southern soldier whose mental hori- 
 zon had been bounded by his neighborhood 
 of a radius not exceeding fifteen or twenty 
 miles : he saw things that he had never read 
 or dreamed of before. But it is doubtful if it 
 
 69 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 had any corresponding educational value to 
 the ruling class." 
 
 28. " Social lines vanished during the war, and 
 have not reappeared" 
 
 Only eight assent to this unreservedly. 
 What "social lines" existed, perhaps "never 
 deeply marked at any time in Virginia," 
 were natural and could not so easily be 
 obliterated. They appeared less sharp in 
 camp, but their apparent disappearance was 
 only very transient. 
 
 29. " The war made men work, and this alone 
 has been a great blessing to the South" 
 
 Here the intimation that Southern men 
 did not work before the war is emphatically 
 denied. Likewise the further deduction that 
 the "end of life is work." Still, a bare ma- 
 jority approve the statement, and the re- 
 marks that "not only in the South have men 
 70 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 needed incentives to work" may be said to 
 approximate the consensus of opinion. 
 
 50. " The South is the better by far for the 
 spread of education, for the willingness to 
 work, for the loss of slavery, for the main- 
 tenance of the Union, and for the develop- 
 ment of business. But for the war, as 
 war, there was no redeeming feature, no 
 benefit to any one, not one word to be 
 said" 
 
 Only one seriously dissents from the con- 
 cluding sentence ; and four deny parts of the 
 first sentence. The following comments may 
 be noted: (i) "The loss in blood and energy, 
 and the demoralization cannot be calculated. 
 It emasculated manhood North and South 
 and built up graft. Pensions only weaken 
 men"; (2) "Reconstruction was worse than 
 war"; (3) "Too strong, but the curse of the 
 war was heavier than the blessing"; (4) 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 "The South is poorer for her loss of hold 
 on the ideals which actuated her struggle"; 
 (5) "The war was worth all it cost to the 
 South"; (6) "The war was a blessing in 
 many ways to the South. The South is one 
 hundred years ahead of what it would have 
 been without the war"; (7) "The disturbance 
 of the social arrangements of the ante- 
 bellum days among the aristocracy, 'poor 
 whites/ etc., etc., was biologically a good 
 thing, since these class distinctions had 
 ceased to be based largely on excellence of 
 strain"; (8) "It is not unimportant to feel 
 that there is something worth fighting for, 
 worth dying for. It would be hard to say 
 what there is of such worth in our present 
 commercial-industrial life"; (9) "More me- 
 nacing than war is the infertility of the 
 'best' of men, but more especially of 
 women"; (10) "The world has become com- 
 mercialized because the idealists have been 
 killed off." 
 
 72 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 The opinion of an eminent judge seems 
 worth quoting: "There is a degeneration of 
 stock all over the country, but this is due to 
 our social environment. We accept the prin- 
 ciple of contra-selection but I think it diffi- 
 cult to prove. There are just as good men 
 to-day as there were at the time of the Civil 
 War, only the time does not give them the 
 opportunity to show their ability. The de- 
 serters and the conscripts were often men 
 who had to look after large families. The 
 average of Rockbridge County is up to its 
 usual standard. Families which were en- 
 tirely wiped out by the war are the exception. 
 There was usually enough left to keep the 
 stock up/' 
 
 A Confederate general expresses the opin- 
 ion that "the thing which will finally stop 
 war is a conviction of its uselessness rather 
 than any of its biological consequences/' and 
 "that pensions have done more harm than 
 good, especially in the North. One great 
 73 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 cause of the depression in the South is the 
 drain of pensions. The South pays $60,000,- 
 ooo in pensions per year. Of the pension 
 budget total of $4,500,000,000, $1,000,000,- 
 ooo has been paid by the South. North 
 Carolina pays $4,000,000 per year, receiving 
 $770,000 in return (this, besides paying 
 $400,000 in Southern pensions to Southern 
 soldiers). Indiana pays a little more and re- 
 ceives back $10,000,000 per year. The pen- 
 sion list is full of fraud. One $6000 judge 
 
 in M draws $72 per month for total 
 
 disability. A late Commissioner of Pensions 
 at $7200 draws a pension for total disability. 
 The pension list is kept up and increased to 
 make a high tariff seem necessary. To keep 
 up the tariff, the gaps in the pension roll 
 must be kept up. So with warship expenses. 
 They raise the rate of pensions because they 
 cannot extend their area/' 
 
 In a certain Southern State the reversed 
 selection of the war is held responsible for the 
 74 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 type of governor. "The aristocratic counties 
 of my State are completely faded out by loss 
 of their leaders in the war. The same is true 
 
 of the principal city . The men left are 
 
 weak, undersized, and the State has few men 
 fit for leadership." 
 
 In a more Western State the punishment 
 of the war is said to have fallen on "the old, 
 fine, proud, pompous, hospitable aristocracy. 
 It wiped out a third of it and impoverished 
 half the rest/' 
 
 "The spread of education among the 
 masses I consider has been the greatest curse 
 which has ever come upon the country, 
 North or South, just as it has been the 
 greatest evil the West Indies have ever had to 
 contend with," says our radical eudemist. 
 "Work here, of course, means manual labor; 
 willingness to perform this kind of work 
 means inability to perform any other kind, 
 either from lack of opportunity or from lack 
 of personal incentive." On the contrary, it 
 75 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 is urged that "education has been of great 
 benefit. Employment for all an advantage. 
 Loss of slavery makes life better for future 
 generations. Business is more diversified and 
 progress greater. The number of mulattoes 
 has decreased since the war. Union with 
 equal rights and consideration for all sections 
 is far better with sectionalism obliterated. 
 War is a curse to any nation or people/' 
 
 "The evil effect of prolonged war in de- 
 stroying the most virile males is manifest not 
 only in the Southern States of America after 
 the Civil War, but also in the Northern 
 States, especially the New England and 
 Middle States. Ben Butler as Governor 
 of Massachusetts, Tammany rule in New 
 York City and State, Quay rule in Pennsyl- 
 vania, etc., were made possible by the 
 inferior citizenship that they represented. 
 The Southern-Civil-War soldiers were so far 
 superior to the post-bellum generation that 
 they controlled and directed public affairs in 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 the South (generally speaking) until about 
 1900, when practically all of them were dead ; 
 the same is true to a great extent of many 
 Northern States; it is difficult to find for 
 thirty years after the war a conspicuous 
 Southern leader who has not been a soldier/' 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 In conclusion, we are impressed that with 
 respect to the eugenic aspect of the Civil War 
 we are dealing with matters insusceptible of 
 precise determination. Many factors united 
 to work an apparently racial effect; these 
 factors are so intricately and reciprocally 
 interrelated as to preclude definite isolation 
 and tracing of the complete effects of any one. 
 The patent results are thus more or less 
 matters of environment as well as of differ- 
 ences in germ-plasm, of euthenics as well as 
 of eugenics. We hesitate to attempt even a 
 guarded definite conclusion. Perhaps it were 
 77 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 better to leave it to interested readers to 
 draw conclusions each one for himself. We 
 have presented the matter largely in the 
 words of those who have given us the best of 
 their life experience. A just weighing of all 
 this evidence, however, leaves a decided 
 balance in favor of grave racial hurt in con- 
 sequence of war, and this certainty is cumu- 
 lative, becoming more definite with the con- 
 sideration of each new area. Each of the 
 other baneful racial influences associated 
 with the problem, social, cultural, and eco- 
 nomic devastation, emigration, pensions, 
 etc., is nevertheless the direct consequence of 
 war and should be debited to it. Moreover, 
 even granting that the South and the coun- 
 try as a whole are, relative to ante-bellum 
 days, no poorer racially in consequence of 
 the war, an assumption no one can main- 
 tain in the face of the enormous waste of one 
 million splendid souls, it is further certain 
 that, could we have had the inspiring pre- 
 
 78 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 sence and wise counsel of these martyrs and 
 their potential offspring, the country would 
 now be immeasurably better off in a yet 
 higher average of physical, mental, and 
 moral stamina. In brief, the theoretical argu- 
 ment for reversed selection seems beyond 
 question. The actual facts concerning our 
 Civil War and the events which followed 
 yield no direct countervailing evidence. We 
 must, therefore, decide that the war has seri- 
 ously impoverished this country of its best 
 human values. No one who has the right to 
 speak, North or South, ventures to regard 
 this war as a source of vigor or virility to the 
 nation. In spite of its thousands of examples 
 of heroism and self-sacrifice, it was plainly 
 a strife between brothers, and a strife in 
 which no one gained through his brother's 
 loss. 
 
 Nor does any competent authority in 
 America maintain the singular heresy of cer- 
 tain public men in England, that the waste 
 79 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 of virility due to war can be repaired by 
 compulsory or voluntary military drill. If 
 we assume that such drill gives increased 
 physical and mental vigor, an assertion true 
 only in a slight degree, the fact remains that 
 such results would not be perpetuated in 
 heredity. (No training, mental or physical, 
 can raise a man above his possibilities and it 
 is the possibilities only that his children in- 
 herity The events in a man's life leave no 
 trace in actual heredity and none in trans- 
 mission, unless the events have consequences 
 which impair the vigor of the germ cells. 
 Those of us who believe in the value of 
 sound physical training to the growing youth 
 cannot admit that barrack life is in any 
 worthy degree a substitute for it. 
 ^ Edward H. Clement, of Boston, referring 
 to these investigations, has used these strik- 
 ing words : " Ever since the last quarter of the 
 last century the lamentation has been heard : 
 Where are the poets of yesterday ? Where are 
 80 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 the historians, the philosophers, the political 
 leaders, the moral reformers [of Boston], 
 whom the whole country and the world 
 gladly followed in the liberalizing of thought 
 and of religion. In the light of the emphasis 
 on the degeneration of nations through their 
 glorious wars, answer might well be sought 
 in the Roll of Honor l of Harvard Memorial 
 Hall. The price was worth paying, no doubt. 
 The ones who gave their lives in the Civil 
 War most certainly thought so. But the 
 price was exacted all the same. There stand 
 the names of those who, but for this sacrifice, 
 might have continued the glory of Boston in 
 all the higher reaches of intellectual life, in 
 national politics, and in social advance." 
 
 The Civil War was followed by the extinc- 
 tion of slavery, by the maintenance of the 
 democracy, and by the spread of the free- 
 school system of the Union throughout the 
 
 1 On this roll are the names of ninety-six men 
 from Harvard University who fell in the Civil War. 
 
 8l 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 rural districts of the South. That all these 
 results were most desirable, even vital to the 
 extension of civilization in the New World, 
 no one may now deny. But we may hesitate 
 to ascribe any of these results directly to the 
 Civil War. Sooner or later they were inevit- 
 able in the life of the people concerned. The 
 exhaustion of the South opened the way, but 
 their final establishment on a basis as per- 
 manent as any human institution can be is 
 due to their innate relation to wisdom and 
 righteousness, and not to the results of any 
 campaign. If these were wrong, they would 
 not have endured. If the struggles of blood 
 and starvation had left at the end a wrong 
 decision, it must sooner or later have come 
 up again for judgment. 
 
 A splendid summary are the words of the 
 Confederate officer who gave us our proposi- 
 tion 30: "The South is the better by far for 
 the spread of education, for its willingness to 
 work, for the loss of slavery, for the mainte- 
 82 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 nance of the Union, and for the development 
 of business. But for the war, as war, there 
 was no redeeming feature, no benefit to any 
 one, not one word to be said." 
 
 We may finally close this discussion with 
 the words of one of the most successful sol- 
 diers of the nineteenth century, William T. 
 Sherman. On May 21, 1865, he wrote to a 
 friend, James L. Yeatman,'"! confess with- 
 out shame that I am tired and sick of war. 
 Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the 
 most brilliant is over dead and mangled 
 bodies, the anguish and lamentations of dis- 
 tant families, appealing to me for missing 
 sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those 
 who have not heard a shot, nor the shrieks 
 and groans of the wounded, friend or foe, 
 who cry aloud for more blood, more ven- 
 geance, more desolation." 
 
II 
 
 WAR'S AFTERMATH IN MACEDONIA 
 
 BY DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 SOME two years ago the Balkan States 
 formed an alliance for the purpose of freeing 
 their kindred peoplg in Macgdonia from the 
 rule of the Turk. They chose for this pur- 
 pose the most costly, wasteful, futile, and 
 uncertain method possible: the method of 
 war. It is clear that war was not the original 
 purpose of the allies at least not that of 
 Bulgaria. Some sort of moral or political 
 suasion was expected to follow from mobili- 
 zation. But such possibility was dissipated 
 when the King of Montenegro advanced on 
 Scutari. 
 
 The conditions in Macedonia seemed to 
 justify any sort of interference. The rule of 
 the Turk is always inefficient. The race, being 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 primarily military, has always failed in civil 
 administration. Long periods of careless 
 tolerance have alternated with savage mas- 
 sacre, the attempt to eradicate all those with 
 a different religion or a different language. 
 Moreover, Macedonia was beset by bands 
 of outlaw patriots, "comitajis," working in 
 rough fashion for the freedom of Macedonia, 
 the one band for its independent autonomy, 
 the other for its union with Bulgaria, the 
 majority of the people of Macedonia being 
 of Bulgarian origin. The changes in politics 
 in Constantinople brought to the front the 
 "Committee of Union and Progress/' and 
 to this committee "union" means the con- 
 version, banishment, or massacre of all ele- 
 ments alien in religion or in speech. The 
 same spirit of politico-linguistic intolerance 
 pervades all the rest of Europe, extending in 
 its degree to Schleswig, Trieste, and Alsace- 
 Lorraine, as well as to Finland, Poland, and 
 Macedonia. And in Macedonia it gave rise 
 85 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 to the proverb, " Better an end with horror, 
 than horror without end/' 
 
 The Balkan War began in an honest spirit 
 of altruism. ( But as war is hell, its atmos- 
 phere is hate. Victory breeds ambition, and 
 ambition in the use of force means moral 
 perversion.] The meddling of the Great 
 Powers led to the dismemberment of Mace- 
 donia, and that, under the inflamed condi- 
 tions then existing, made the second war 
 inevitable. Now Macedonia is a desert waste 
 and the conditions in the Balkans are worse 
 than ever before. But of this Europe ceased 
 to take notice. It had deeds still more hid- 
 eous in contemplation. It is a common ex- 
 pression in Sofia, "Europe n'existe plus," 
 ("Europe no longer exists.") And that is 
 true so far as concerned any help or guidance 
 Europe might exert over these sorely tried 
 young nations of wrangling shepherds, mad- 
 dened by victory, defeat, injustice, and mur- 
 der. 
 
 86 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 A friend in Bulgaria writes (April, 1914) : 
 "There could be no better illustration in the 
 world of your often repeated belief that "war 
 does not settle anything/ The Balkan pen- 
 insula has always been a problem. To-day 
 the problem is keener and more acute than 
 ever before. It has come to be a terrible 
 plague, an awful curse. Life here is wretched. 
 Man is doomed. The fruits of these superb 
 valleys are misery and agony. The only 
 deeds upon which our magnificent moun- 
 tains look down are murder, rapine, streams 
 of blood, and fields of bones. And there is 
 no way out. The very breezes breed hatred 
 and our wild tempests shriek revenge. The 
 birds sing to us of past injustice. The streams 
 soothe our spirits with the intoxicating whis- 
 per of future revenge. Our fathers taught us 
 to remember the Bloody Turk. We teach 
 our children to remember the treacherous 
 Greek." 
 
 The basis of these hatreds is not primarily 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 war. Nor is it to any great extent the differ- 
 ence in race. At the bottom it is religious 
 intolerance. Difference in language is the 
 most obvious sign of heresy in religion/ 
 Through this intolerance nearly a million\ 
 people, almost half the people of Macedonia 
 and Thrace, have lost their homes and sav- 
 ings since the war, and are wandering as 
 refugees among people of their race who give 
 them scanty welcome. 
 
 In October, 1913, my Bulgarian corre- 
 spondent wrote: "The lot of the refugees 
 is wretched beyond description. [Those in 
 Samokov are dying daily from cold and 
 privation. They are without homes, prop- 
 erty, schools, and everything else, including 
 hope. Then added to this hopelessness is 
 the fact that the Bulgarians do not like these 
 refugees. They tell them: "My brother is 
 lying dead in Macedonia because of you, and 
 now you come up here to live in my house, 
 eat my bread, and take my job. Get out/ 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 "And the refugee answers: 'Who told you to 
 come down to Macedonia and trample down 
 our vineyards, eat our flocks, and then run 
 off and leave our village to be burned ? I 
 don't care if your brother is dead in Mace- 
 donia. My brother is dead, too/ The Bul- 
 garian will survive all this because he is of 
 such a nature that he cannot be entirely 
 conquered, but the process of recovery will 
 be terribly, terribly painful/' 
 
 In May, 1914, the writer, accompanied 
 by his friends, Dr. John Mez, of Munich; 
 R. H. Markham, principal of the American 
 School at Samokov; and Emil F. Hollmann, 
 of Oxford, crossed Bulgaria and Macedonia 
 from the Danube to the ^Egean Sea. Among 
 other things we saw the burned towns and 
 the refugees. In western Bulgaria a single 
 good highway leads from Sofia to Salonica. 
 Down this highway the Turks fled in the 
 first Balkan War, the Turkish population 
 following them. Up this road the Bulgarian 
 89 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 troops fled in the second Balkan War, fol- 
 lowed by the Greeks. While the Rouman- 
 ians were burning their homes, the Bulgarian 
 farmers had no stomach for fighting Greeks. 
 After the Treaty of Bucharest had divided 
 Macedonia from east to west by an artificial 
 line the Greek army retreated from Bulgarian 
 territory, followed by most of the Greek 
 population, burning towns and bridges as 
 they went, as the Turks before them had 
 done. 
 
 All the way from Sofia to Petritsch, the 
 border town, we saw the groups of refugees. 
 From Simlivit, the northernmost town of 
 Bulgarian Macedonia, to Petritsch, every 
 town Dzumaia, Livonovo, Kula, and the 
 rest has been burned, wholly or in part, 
 scarcely a house within reach of the moving 
 armies being left with a roof over it. 
 
 In Petritsch, hundreds of refugees from 
 the Salonica district sit about on the rough 
 stone sidewalks waiting waiting for the 
 90 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 revision of the Treaty of Bucharest. Some 
 newspaper had said that the Powers would 
 revise this shameful treaty so that these 
 people could go back to their homes. But 
 that revision 1 will never come. "Europe 
 no longer exists." 
 
 One man in Petritsch, a citizen of West 
 Virginia, had come to Macedonia to settle 
 his father's estate, a good farm near Salonica. 
 This he had lost; and as a refugee he was 
 keeping a little food shop competing with 
 many others for the trifling purchases of 
 
 1 Again my friend writes: "It is impossible for us 
 to stay in the frying-pan, but we don't know just 
 what fire to jump into. A belief is inculcated and 
 widely accepted that Roumania and Turkey are 
 both going to return to Bulgaria the land they took 
 from her. Our northeast boundary will be as of 
 yore, our southeast boundary will be Enos Midia. 
 England, I believe, is the godmother who will bring 
 this about. When we are 'licking,' let the big bullies 
 keep their hands off. When we are being whipped, 
 we implore their help, curse them for their delay, 
 and build spacious air-castles out of their unsub- 
 stantial promises." 
 
 91 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 half-starved people. "The cost of living has 
 doubled ; the means of living are gone." 
 
 In Sinjelovo, a little Bulgarian town on the 
 Greek side of the made-up boundary, the 
 men had all been driven across the river into 
 the Bulgarian holdings. The women re- 
 mained and gathered the crops. In general, 
 the women harvested all the Balkan crops 
 in 1913. Thanks to the help of rain and sun- 
 shine, the harvests were most bountiful. 
 
 The great highway crosses the border on a 
 bridge over the little river Bistritza ("clear 
 water"). Here we found encamped the 
 growers of tobacco, "Turkish tobacco," from 
 "a little Dead Sea of Commerce," the rich 
 valley of Strumitza. The Bulgarian growers 
 were not allowed to pass the border. The 
 buyers came up from Salonica and the crop 
 was transferred from the hundreds of bul- 
 lock teams to a host of buffalo carts and a 
 train of camels headed for Salonica. Inci- 
 dentally the owners paid a duty of 33 J per 
 92 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 cent for the privilege of crossing Greek terri- 
 tory. Incidentally, too, we may notice that 
 the Treaty of Bucharest has cut off most of 
 the hinterland from the seaports of Salonica, 
 Cavalla, and Varna. The effect of this on 
 Salonica has been most hurtful. The high 
 tariffs and excessive taxes "have made this 
 the most critical period in the history of Sal- 
 onica: the Government of Athens treats its 
 new provinces as the goose with the golden 
 egg." 1 "The cow that gives the milk for mili- 
 tary aggrandizement at Athens is the New 
 Greece." 
 
 Crossing over into this new Greece, we 
 
 were for two days in the camp "Christos 
 
 aneste Hellas," the guests of a division of 
 
 the Greek army, charming young men on the 
 
 whole, many of them citizens of the United 
 
 States. Some of these were possessed with 
 
 the "On to Constantinople" idea, but one 
 
 of them confided his belief that war brought 
 
 1 Die Information, April 22, 1914. 
 
 93 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 no good to Greece, nor could he see why 
 Christians should want to kill each other. 
 
 At Demir Hissar, where the highway 
 crosses the railway which connects Adrian- 
 ople with Salonica, we met the Greek refu- 
 gees from Thrace. These were living in box 
 cars at the stations, a dozen or two at this 
 and each of the other stations on the road. 
 At the larger towns, as Kilkis and Salonica, 
 they were gathered in great tent cities, ten 
 thousand or more in each place. All these 
 towns on the road between Drama and 
 Salonica, originally half Bulgarian, the rest 
 Greek and Turkish, had been burned in whole 
 or in part by one or all of the three armies 
 which passed through them. For the history 
 of these conflagrations I refer the reader to 
 the report of the Carnegie Commission of 
 Investigation. As to this monumental piece 
 of work I may say that I believe it to be 
 absolutely trustworthy, as just and as accu- 
 rate as such a report could be made. It is 
 
 94 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 not pleasant reading for the most part. It 
 was not easy writing, but the cure for the 
 evil conditions which have prevailed and 
 still prevail in the Balkans rests on knowing 
 the truth as to the disease. Publicity would 
 cure most of the larger evils from which all 
 Europe is suffering. "There never was a 
 good war nor a bad peace/' In this Benja- 
 min Franklin was essentially right, but no 
 bad war ever gave way to a good peace. War, 
 fills the ground with the seeds of other wars, 
 and while these spring up, peace exists only 
 in name. 
 
 The refugees at Demir Hissar came from 
 the region about Adrianople. These had 
 been driven out of Thrace to make way for 
 Albanian refugees from Servian rule in Novi- 
 bazar. These Albanians gave the Greeks 
 from two hours to four days to vacate their 
 holdings. The Government refused pass- 
 ports or protection. The farmers were not 
 allowed to go to the towns to sell their prod- 
 95 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 uce and they had no alternative but to go. 
 With the Turk, as more or less with the 
 other Balkan nations, "union" means one 
 flag, one religion, and one language, and 
 aliens are given the choice of immediate con- 
 version or banishment, or in extreme cases 
 massacre. The whole situation was summed 
 up by one Thracian farmer in the Italian 
 word "duro" ("hard"). 
 
 But these conditions were not so hard as 
 those of the Bulgarian emigrants, for these 
 fled in the autumn and winter. The Thra- 
 cians set forth in the perfect weather of the 
 Macedonian May. To the children this 
 movement in crowds from place to place, 
 cooking rice on fires of weeds, had all the 
 charm of a picnic. 
 
 It is estimated that there are about three 
 hundred thousand of these Greek refugees 
 in Macedonia. Little by little they are set- 
 tled on farms and in villages abandoned by 
 Bulgarians and Turks. It was said that fifty 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 thousand of these had come from Asia Minor, 
 driven out by boycott and ostracism before 
 the disturbances in Smyrna and Mytilene. 
 It is estimated that about forty-five thou- 
 sand Bulgarian refugees from Turkish Thrace 
 are at Burgas. In a recent Turkish journal 
 is a plea for bringing these back to Thrace : 
 "These Albanians are more expert with the 
 mauser than with the plough. They show 
 no skill in any trade save that of cattle- 
 thieves, while the Bulgarians are thrifty and 
 industrious, and they are now our friends." 
 
 It is said that the towns about Varna are 
 crowded likewise with Bulgarians driven 
 by the Roumanians from the Dobruja dis- 
 trict filched by them through the Treaty of 
 Bucharest. 
 
 Out of Greek Macedonia before the ist 
 of June 212,000 Turks had left the port of 
 Salonica. Most of these went as steerage 
 passengers on the steamers for Constanti- 
 nople, carrying with them their scanty be- 
 97 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 longings. These have been placed in part 
 in properties abandoned by Greeks in Thrace, 
 and in part, it is said, on the property of 
 inhabitants of Asia Minor. Many of these 
 are Pomaks, Bulgarians converted to Is- 
 lam. It is claimed by the Greeks that most 
 of these have come from Servian and Bul- 
 garian Macedonia. 
 
 Some Turks are still left in the towns of 
 Bulgarian Macedonia, to all appearance 
 mostly idlers. In Greek Macedonia, there 
 are still many Turks. The number is roughly 
 estimated at sixty thousand, most of them 
 being in the larger towns. Turkish teamsters 
 and other laborers are numerous, while 
 Turks of the wealthier classes are abun- 
 dantly in evidence in the Salonica cafes. In 
 Bulgarian Thrace, Greeks are unwelcome, 
 but no attempt has been made to expel the 
 Turks. About a dozen Turks have seats at 
 Sofia, and these constitute the majority of 
 the present " liberal " ministry over the demo- 
 98 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 cratic and anti-war elements, the combined 
 radicals and socialists in that confused and 
 incoherent body. The priests of the state 
 church still call for war and urge their 
 flocks "not to listen to the godless prattlers 
 who talk of peace. What Bulgaria needs is 
 war." But more war would be suicide. The 
 socialists print in black headlines, "Let us 
 meet violence with violence." Even from 
 her own soldiers Bulgaria would seem to be 
 in danger. Their experience with Roumania 
 sickened their ardor. If they were gathered 
 together again with guns in their hands and 
 brought face to face with another awful 
 summer, it is possible that they would make 
 a violent and bloody protest. The Bulga- 
 rian is the most long-suffering of men, but 
 there is a limit beyond which he will 
 not go. 
 
 / Chiefly it is those who do not do the fight- 
 ing who want more war. The condition is 
 different in Servia and in Greece, where vic- 
 99 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 tory has brought its inevitable demoraliza- 
 tion. The militarist is in the saddle, and the 
 wise and conservative counsels of the min- 
 isters, Paschich and Venezelos, count for 
 little so far as the management of Macedonia 
 is concerned. 
 
 In Servia the Bulgarians are mostly not 
 allowed to leave, but are forcibly converted 
 into Servians. Their "religion" and their 
 names are changed together. Papoff be- 
 comes Papovitch, Radosloff is Radoslavitch, 
 and the young men are at once forced into 
 military service. 
 
 Race differences are not held of high im- 
 portance. The visible essential is linguistic 
 uniformity, with subordination to the Greek 
 patriarch instead of to the schismatic exarch 
 at Sofia. It is not strange that in the confu- 
 sion many Bulgarians turn toward the more 
 stable influences of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. The belief, partly justified, that 
 Russia has betrayed and abandoned Bul- 
 100 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH. 
 
 garia helps to give force to the movement 
 away from the religion of Russia. 
 % The final legacy of war is corruption and 
 hate. The "heroic war," to quote the head- 
 lines of the London journals, becomes in- 
 evitably the " squalid war/' the "mad war," 
 the "sad war/' 
 
 J But in all this, the uninformed and selfish 
 meddling of the Great Powers has a large 
 responsibility. The Treaty of London, for 
 well or ill, created the mythical kingdom of 
 Albania. This was not for Albania's sake, 
 but to quiet the jealousies of Austria and 
 Italy. The treaty deprived Servia of Duraz- 
 zo, Montenegro of Scutari, Greece of Epirus, 
 thus overturning all agreements among the 
 allies as to the adjustment of the liberated 
 lands. The inevitable alternative was the 
 dismemberment of Macedonia, and as no 
 provision was made for enforcing tolerance 
 of any kind in the heated combatants, no 
 tolerance exists. Some sort of autonomy 
 101 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 should have been given to Macedonia. Its 
 lands should have been in some fashion held 
 in trust for its people, and the rights of per- 
 son and property of all the varied races in 
 this long-suffering land should have been 
 held in respect. Some provision for safe- 
 guarding the rights of men is not too much 
 to expect of a concert of Powers assuming to 
 represent the most advanced phases of world 
 civilization. If the Powers could not do this, 
 and it seems that they could not, they 
 should have kept hands off. 
 
 With half the effort spent in wresting the 
 village of Scutari from the hands of King 
 Nicola, it would seem that the second Balkan 
 War could have been forestalled and the un- 
 fortunate adjustments at Bucharest would 
 never have taken place. 
 
 But all this is past history. The fact ac- 
 complished cannot be changed, and the great 
 migration, like that forty years ago from 
 Alsace-Lorraine, cannot be turned back- 
 102 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 ward to the abandoned homes. There is some 
 degree of hope for the future, wretched as the 
 present condition may be. The new popula- 
 tions will take new roots in time, and in new 
 interests men forget to hate. Where exhaus- 
 tion makes war impossible, there is time for 
 mediation and for conciliation. Bulgaria, 
 most humiliated of all, offers, for that rea- 
 son, if for no other, most hope for the future. 
 The most powerful influence in all south- 
 eastern Europe for good will and good order 
 exists in Robert College at Constantinople. 
 This is democratic, international, and Chris- 
 tian. Its hold is stronger in Bulgaria than 
 anywhere else. The intellectual leaders at 
 Sofia are very largely its graduates. 
 
 In any case, there can be little progress in 
 the Balkans until settled quiet gives oppor- 
 tunity for agricultural, industrial, and edu- 
 cational advance. And settled quiet is still 
 far away. It awaits the time when the civil 
 authority shall everywhere dominate the 
 103 
 
WAR'S AFTERMATH 
 
 military, and where customs unions, cooper- 
 ation in business, and cooperation in thought 
 shall lead these people to recognize that one 
 fate befalls them all and that the welfare of 
 each Balkan nation is bound up in the wel- 
 fare of its neighbors. 
 
 THE END 
 
 
_iv 
 
 LOAN PERIOD ] 
 
 J1OME USE 
 
 4 
 
 Librar 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 llilliW 
 
 CDSOfllSSMS 
 
 H 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY