...ousand years ago are the sheet-anchor of the passing generation, so deeply buried, so fixed, that the most violent efforts of the maddest fanatic can drag it but a hand's-breadth. Before the war, Americans were like the crowd in that terrible hall of Eblis which Beckford painted for us,--each man with his hand pressed on the incurable sore in his bosom, and pledged not to speak of it; compared with oth...