434
JOHN HENRY RALEIGH
with it, the heroes are single men who either oppose it or in some
fashion manage to step outside of it. Stephens, who opposes it, is de–
scribed as an "impossibilist," one who cares nothing for consequences,
who always carries his ideals to extremes, who would rather lay down
his arms than adopt those methods of his enemy of which he disapproves.
For one who steps aside, so to speak, there is Oliver Wendell Holmes,
characterized as a "jobbist," the man with an ideal of excellence "which
is not to save others but to justify oneself," and who works at his pro–
fession, "without trying to improve the world or to make an impres–
sion." I don't suppose any author has ever put
t'
ese two men, Stephens
and Holmes, side-by-side before, yet, as presented here, they certainly
possess a generic resemblance. Both were long-lived, and long-lived
in a special way, almost by an act of the will. Physically, Stephens was
an ailing, aching shell most of his life, while Holmes, having great
bodily vigor, had yet to push himself through recovery from the
severe wounds he suffered in the Civil War. Both had an astringent,
pessimistic, stoical outlook on life and men. Both were tough-minded
and intransigent.
If
Holmes had fought in the Civil War, he finally
came to disapprove of it and its consequences. In his later years he
never read newspapers and was detached from
c~ntemporary
life.
Both men had served the Republic in a deeper sense than most of the
other major figures in the book: the one by asserting an absolute ideal,
the other by devoting himself to the services of the Supreme Court.
Above all, both were the end-point of a noble tradition. When Stephens
died, there died with him:
... the South of Jefferson and Madison, of Randolph, Calhoun
and Clay; of the landowners' and merchants' republic, of the balance
of power in Congress, of the great collaboration and the great debates.
Holmes represented the Brahmin tradition of New England with its
ideal of public service and its commitment to learning, released, in
Holmes' case, from what Mr. Wilson regards as the great liability of
historical New England culture, a belief in Calvinism with its resultant
moral intolerance and a penchant for thinking one's own notions of
right and wrong constitute categorical imperatives for the rest of the
umverse.
The third hero, not discussed in such detail and I think purposely
kept at more of a distance, is Robert E. Lee, who belongs "as does no
other public figure of his generation, to the Roman phase of the
Republic." With Lee then the Revolutionary War generation comes
into the picture. Lee was the legitimate heir of Washington and of the
