And besides, there are new conditions of existence
which make war as it is with us very different from war as it has been.
The first and obvious difference consists in the fact that the whole
nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of a network of iron
nerves which flash sensation and volition backward and forward to and
from towns and provinces as if they were organs and limbs of a single
living body. The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it
were, move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was
the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th
of April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts
with a clenched fist full of bayonets at the end of it?
This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power of instantaneous
action, keeps us always alive with excitement. It is not a breathless
courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight
of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know
for a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden
with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always
for the last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements of
our armies.
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