Even when his beloved Arlington was seized, and the swords, pictures,
silverware and other precious mementos of Washington were carried
off, his protest was couched in quiet and dignified language, well
calculated to make those to whom it was addressed (and later every
American) blush with shame. Likewise in the heat of battle, when
wild tongues were loosed and each side accused the other of all
that hate could suggest, he never forgot that his opponents were
Americans. "Drive those people back," or "Don't let those people
pass you," were the harshest words he ever uttered of his foes.

To him war was not a mere license to destroy human life. It was
a terrible weapon to be used scientifically, not with the idea of
slaughtering as many of the enemy as possible, but to protect the
State for whose defense he had drawn his sword. This was distinctly
his attitude as he watched Pope's defeated columns reeling from
the field. Neither by word nor deed did he exult over the fallen
foe or indulge in self-glorification at his expense. His sole
thought was to utilize the victory that the war would be speedily
brought to a successful close; and, spreading out his maps in the
quiet of his tent, he proceeded to study them with this idea.

Almost directly in front of his victorious army stretched the
intrenchments of Washington but, although he knew something of
the panic into which that city had been thrown by the last battle,
he had not troops enough to risk assaulting fortifications to the
defense of which well-nigh every able-bodied man in the vicinity
had been called. The fall of Washington might perhaps have ended
the war, but the loss of the neighboring state of Maryland and an
attack on some of the Pennsylvania cities, such as Harrisburg and
Philadelphia, promised to prove equally effective. The chances