The spirit of the nation will be shown in its readiness to meet without shrinking such sacrifice of life as may be demanded in gaining our end.  We must all suffer and rejoice together,—­but let there be no unmanly or unwomanly fear of bloodshed.  The deaths of our men from sickness, from camp epidemics, are what we should fear and prevent; death on the battle-field we have no right to dread.  The men who die in this cause die well; they could wish for no more honorable end of life.

The honor lost in our recent defeat cannot be regained,—­but it is indeed one of the advantages of defeat to teach men the preciousness of honor, the necessity of winning and keeping it at any cost.  Honor and duty are but two names for the same thing in war.  But the novelty of war is so great to us, we are so unpractised in it, and we have thought so little of it heretofore as concerning ourselves, that there is danger lest we fail at first to appreciate its finer elements, and neglect the opportunities it affords for the practice of virtues rarely called out in civil life.  The common boast of the South, that there alone was to be found the chivalry of America, and that among the Southern people was a higher strain of courage and a keener sense of honor than among the people of the North, is now to be brought to the test.  There is not need to repeat the commonplaces about bravery and honor.  But we and our soldiers should remember that it is not the mere performance of set work that is required of them, but the valiant and generous alacrity of noble minds in deeds of daring and of courtesy.  Though the science of war has in modern times changed the relations and the duties of men on the battle-field from what they were in the old days of knighthood, yet there is still room for the display of stainless valor and of manful virtue.  Honor and courage are part of our religion; and the coward or the man careless of honor in our army of liberty should fall under heavier shame than ever rested on the disgraced soldier in former times.  The sense of honor is finer than the common sense of the world.  It counts no cost and reckons no sacrifice great.  “Then the king wept, and dried his eyes, and said, ’Your courage had neere hand destroyed you, for I call it folly knights to abide when they be overmatched.’  ‘Nay,’ said Sir Lancelot and the other, ’for once shamed may never be recovered.’” The examples of Bayard,—­sans peur et sans reproche,—­of Sidney, of the heroes of old or recent days, are for our imitation.  We are bound to be no less worthy of praise and remembrance than they.  They did nothing too high for us to imitate.  And in their glorious company we may hope that some of our names may yet be enrolled, to stand as the inspiring exemplars and the models for coming times.  If defeat has brought us shame, it has brought us also firmer resolve.  No man can be said to know himself, or to have assurance of his force of principle and character, till he has