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Virginia tradition, of that "classical antique virtue, at once aristo–
cratic and republican . . ." And perhaps finally it is Lee, rather than
Stephens, who is Holmes' proper counterpart: the last Virginian and
the last Brahmin are alike in that they inspire a feeling of "awe" in
their role of "republican Romans"-"Justice Holmes was perhaps the
last Roman."
Whatever may be the arguments about the Civil War, its causes
and consequences, whether or not it should have happened, whether
its centralizing tendencies were beneficent (Allen Nevins) or harm–
ful (Wilson) , and so on-all these issues are endlessly debatable and
will never be settled decisively. It is, however, a pragmatic fact that
two noble traditions once did exist in the United States and, for
whatever reasons and the Civil War is certainly one of them, no
longer do. (Readers of Mr. Wilson's other works are familiar with
his patriotic devotion to them and will regret that Lincoln is no
longer in the pantheon, as do I, but I think he is not, among other
reasons, for the very fact that he is more a unique individual and
less a vessel for a tradition.) It is a fact too that these traditions at
times produced superior individuals, through the aristocratic ethos of
the South and through the moral-intellectual-public service ethos of
New England, along with, be it admitted, pretense and hypocrisy in
weaker souls. (Maybe it's worth a thousand hypocrites to get one great
man.) My own preference would be for what New England used to
represent, but that Lee was an authentically great man is again his–
torical fact. At the outbreak of the War, and before Lee resigned from
the American Army, General Winfield Scott, with Lincoln's con–
currence, wished to make him Commanding General of the Union
Armies. This is perhaps unparalleled in civil strife, that a soldier was
offered the command of one faction and then went on to command
the other, without the least hint or breath of his being in any sense
a time-server or tum-coat. Lee knew too that he was choosing the
losing side, and he detested both slavery and secession. Holmes in his
way, and in terms of his values, possessed this same natural superiority
and resolute steadfastness.
At its heart then
Patriotic Gore,
besides being all kinds of other
things, and I have hardly done it justice, is an act of patriotism, a
historical reminder not only of the great hopes of the original Re–
public but of the great men who lived its ideals.
If
these men are
draped with robes that glow with a kind of supernal light, that is all
right too because this is what an epic is supposed to do: to present
the national life and purposes at their highest pitch and enveloped in
