WEDDING RING
405
with whom I was standing on the deck. We had previously greeted
him. My brother again, and more intimately, congratulated Mr.
Davis, who replied that he could take no pleasure
in
the honor. I have,
he said, always looked upon the Union with a superstitious reverence
and have freely risked my life for its dear flag on more than one bat–
tlefield, and you, gentlemen, can conceive the sentiment now in me
that the object of my attachment for many years has been withdrawn
from me. And he continued, I have in the present moment only the
melancholy pleasure of an easy conscience. Then he smiled, as he did
rarely. Thereupon he took his leave of us and retired within. I had ob–
served how worn to emaciation was his face by illness and care, and
how thin the skin lay over the bone. I remarked to my brother that
Mr. Davis did not look well. He replied, a sick man, it is a fine how–
de-do to have a sick man for a president. I responded that there might
be no war, that Mr. Davis hoped for peace. But my brother said,
make no mistake, the Yankees will fight and they will fight well and
Mr. Davis
is
a fool to hope for peace. I replied,
all
good men hope
for peace. At this my brother uttered an indistinguishable exclamation
and said, what we want now that they've got into this is not a good
man but a man who can win, and I am not interested in the luxury of
Mr. Davis' conscience. Then my brother and I continued our prome–
nade in silence, and I reflected that Mr. Davis was a good man. But
the world is full of good men, I reflect as I write these lines, and yet
the world drives hard into darkness and the blindness of blood, even
as now late at night I sit in this hotel room in Vicksburg, and I am
moved to ask the meaning of our virtue. May God hear our prayer!"
Gilbert received a commission as colonel
in
a cavalry regiment.
Cass
enlisted ac; a private in the Second Mississippi Rifles. "You could
be a captain," Gilbert said, "or a major. You've got brains enough
for that. And," he added, "damned few of them have."
Cass
replied
that he preferred to be a private soldier, "marching with other men."
But he could not tell his brother why, or tell his brother that, though
he would march with other men and would carry a weapon
in
his
hand, he would never take the life of an enemy. "I must march with
these men who march," he wrote in the journal, "for they are my
people and I must partake with them of all bitterness, and that more
fully . But I cannot take the life of another man. How can I who have
taken the life of my friend, take the life of an enemy, for I have used
up my right to blood?" So Cass marched away to war, carrying the
musket which was, for him, but a meaningless burden, and wearing
on a string, against the flesh of his chest, beneath the fabric of the gray
jacket, the ring which had once been Duncan Trice's wedding ring
