To young men like Lanier the Southern cause was one of liberty,
of resistance to despotism and fanaticism, of the protection of homes.
He who would understand their point of view must read such war lyrics as
"Maryland, My Maryland" and Timrod's "Ethnogenesis", or enter sympathetically
into the lives of that youthful band of Confederate soldiers all of whom
were afterwards to become distinguished in the field of letters, --
Timrod, Hayne, Cable, Maurice Thompson, and Lanier.

It was not given to many men on either side to divine
the true issues of the war. Lanier afterwards rejoiced
in the overthrow of slavery, and knew that it was the belief
in the soundness and greatness of the American Union
among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest
which really conquered the South. "As soon as we invaded the North," he said,
"and arrayed this sentiment against us, our swift destruction followed."
In a note-book of 1867 he pointed out with touches of humor
the folly of many of the ideas formerly held by himself and other Southerners.
He is writing an essay on the Devil's Bombs, "some half-dozen of which
were exploded between the years 1861 and 1865 over the Southern portion
of North America with widespread and somewhat sad results: namely,
a million of men slain and maimed; a million of widows and orphans created;
several billions of money destroyed; several hundred thousand
of ignorant schoolboys who could not study on account of the noise
made by the shells; and a large miscellaneous mass of poverty, starvation,
recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country
that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated."
This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit
of the Southern people. He himself became "convinced of his ability
to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then,
by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction;