Read the account of the retreat of the advanced force of our own army at the Battle of Monmouth Court-House.  Washington could not believe the first story told him.  Presently he met one fugitive after another, and then Grayson’s and Patton’s regiments in disorderly retreat.  He did not know what to make of it.  There had been no fighting except a successful skirmish with the enemy’s cavalry.  He met Major Howard; this officer could give no reason for the running,—­had never seen the like.  Another officer swears they are flying from a shadow.  Lee tries to account for it,—­troops confused by contradictory intelligence, by disobedience of orders, by the meddling and blundering of individuals,—­vague excuses all, the plain truth being that they had given way to a panic.  But for Washington’s fierce commands and threats, the retreat might have become a total rout.

It is curious to see how the little incidents, even, of our late accelerated retrograde movement recall those of the old Revolutionary story.  Mr. Russell speaks thus of the fugitives:  “Faces black and dusty, tongues out in the heat, eyes staring,—­it was a most wonderful sight.”  If Mr. Russell had ever read Stedman’s account of his own countrymen’s twenty-mile run from Concord to Bunker’s Hill, he would have learned that they “were so much exhausted with fatigue, that they were obliged to lie down for rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like those of dogs after a chase.”  One rout is as much like another as the scamper of one flock of sheep like that of all others.

A pleasing consequence of this war we are engaged in has hardly been enough thought of.  It is a rough way of introducing distant fellow-citizens of the same land to each other’s acquaintance.  Next to the intimacy of love is that of enmity.  Nay,

  “Love itself could never pant
  For all that beauty sighs to grant
  With half the fervor hate bestows
  Upon the last embrace of foes,
  When, grappling in the fight, they fold
  Those arms that ne’er shall lose their hold.”

“We shall learn to respect each other,” as one of our conservative friends said long ago.  It is a great mistake to try to prove our own countrymen cowards and degenerate from the old stock.  It is worth the price of some hard fighting to show the contrary to the satisfaction of both parties.  The Scotch and English called each other all possible hard names in the time of their international warfare; but the day has come for them, as it will surely come for us, when the rivals and enemies must stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder, each proud of the other’s bravery.

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