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existence was made quite unpleasant in his own immediate neighborhood.
If he had been a commissioned officer, his face was likely to appear in an illustrated paper, accompanied by the statement that he had “shown the white feather,” --another term for cowardice.
A reference to any file of illustrated papers of those days will show a large number of such persons.
Such gratuitous advertising by a generally loyal, though not always discreet press did some men gross injustice; for, as already intimated, many of the men thus publicly sketched and denounced were among the most worthy and loyal of citizens.
A little later than the period of which I am treating, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the following poem, hitting off a certain limited class in the community:--
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