Grant vs Whitman: what does war truly cost?
GRANT vs WALT WHITMAN go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.
We agree on the essential thing, Walt: war is no glory but a horror - I never approved the boastfulness of victory, and I hold that this Union was worth every grief it cost us.
Yes, General, and I saw that cost in the cots of Armory Square - the boy with the shattered arm, the quiet dying - the real war, I wrote, will never get in the books, yet it must not be forgotten.
But here we part: I bore the weight of ending it quickly, and a swift, hard blow that saves the nation is mercy - hesitation only lengthens the list of your hospital boys.
And I answer that no arithmetic of victory redeems a single face I held as it went cold - the nation is those men, one by one, and to number them as a price already loses what we fought to save.
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