overmatch them in fair fight with the bayonet. The regiments
which, in the Mexican war, under the lead of Taylor, captured
Monterey, and beat back Santa Anna at Buena Vista, or which, with
Scott as commander, stormed Molino Del Rey and Chapultepec,
proved their ability to bear terrible loss, to wrest victory from
overwhelming numbers, and to carry by open assault positions of
formidable strength held by a veteran army. But in none of these
three wars was the fighting so resolute and bloody as in the
Civil War.

Countless deeds of heroism were performed by Northerner and by
Southerner, by officer and by private, in every year of the great
struggle. The immense majority of these deeds went unrecorded,
and were known to few beyond the immediate participants. Of those
that were noticed it would be impossible even to make a dry
catalogue in ten such volumes as this. All that can be done is to
choose out two or three acts of heroism, not as exceptions, but
as examples of hundreds of others. The times of war are iron
times, and bring out all that is best as well as all that is
basest in the human heart. In a full recital of the civil war, as
of every other great conflict, there would stand out in naked
relief feats of wonderful daring and self-devotion, and, mixed
among them, deeds of cowardice, of treachery, of barbarous
brutality. Sadder still, such a recital would show strange
contrasts in the careers of individual men, men who at one time
acted well and nobly, and at another time ill and basely. The
ugly truths must not be blinked, and the lessons they teach
should be set forth by every historian, and learned by every
statesman and soldier; but, for our good fortune, the lessons
best worth learning in the nation's past are lessons of heroism.