Nor must there be forgotten the temper which war begets, of mutual hate between whole peoples. Forty years later we bring ourselves,--some of us, and in a measure,--to see that our opponents of either side had some justification or some excuse; that they perhaps were honest as we. But little room was there for such mutual forbearance of judgment while the fight was on. For the average man, for most men, to fight means also to hate. While the contest lasted, Northerners habitually spoke of their foes as "the rebels,"--not in contumely, but as matter-of-fact description. They were "rebels" in common speech, and when one warmed a little they were "traitors." Good men said that now for the first time they saw why the imprecatory Psalms were written,--theirs was the only cursing strong enough for the country's enemies. Quite as hearty was the South's detestation of the Yankee invaders and despots,--the fanatics and their hired minions. The Southern feeling took the keener edge, because sharpened by the bitter fact of invasion and the hardships it brought. With them the home suffered, not only as at the North, by the departure of father or son to danger or death; the Southern homes often saw the foes in their midst, and sometimes suffered ravage and spoil. "How can you expect me to be well reconstructed," asked a Virginian after the war, "When I remember the family vaults in which the silver plates were wrenched from the coffins by your soldiers?" When the fighting was over, the life of the reunited nation had to work its way for a generation,--and the end is not yet,--against the hostilities, the rancors, the misunderstandings, generated in those four years of strife.