CHIEFLY ABOUT WAR MATTERS.
By a Peaceable Man.
[This article appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly" for July, 1862, and is
now first reprinted among Hawthorne's collected writings. The editor of
the magazine objected to sundry paragraphs in the manuscript, and these
were cancelled with the consent of the author, who himself supplied all
the foot-notes that accompanied the article when it was published. It
has seemed best to retain them in the present reproduction. One of the
suppressed passages, in which President Lincoln is described, has since
been printed, and is therefore restored to its proper place in the
following pages.--G. P. L.]
Here is no remoteness of life and thought, no hermetically sealed
seclusion, except possibly, that of the grave, into which the disturbing
influences of this war do not penetrate. Of course, the general
heart-quake of the country long ago knocked at my cottage-door, and
compelled me, reluctantly, to suspend the contemplation of certain
fantasies, to which, according to my harmless custom, I was endeavoring
to give a sufficiently life-like aspect to admit of their figuring in a
romance. As I make no pretensions to state-craft or soldiership, and
could promote the common weal neither by valor nor counsel, it seemed, at
first, a pity that I should be debarred from such unsubstantial business
as I had contrived for myself, since nothing more genuine was to be
substituted for it.
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