American social fences have to be continually repaired; in England they are like wild hedges; they grow if left alone. - Denis William Brogan

The combination of a profound hatred of war and militarism with an innocent delight in playing soldiers is one of these apparent contradictions of American life that one has to accept.

After the Civil War any well-established village in New England or the northern Middle West could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

If we are to consider what holds the South back from the modern world in so graceless and often base a way, we must allow for the survival of the Confederate legend. This legend is now less an heroic memory than poison in the blood; it recalls less Chancellorsville, or even Nashville, than Oxford, Mississippi, with Ross Barnett as the poor man's Jefferson Davis.