I met in that hospital a Confederate soldier from one of the western counties of Arkansas. His name was Anderson. He had small, shining black eyes, peeping out from under black eyebrows; long, heavy, black whiskers, unkempt and begrimed, needing the cleansing power of soap and water; thick, shocky black hair that hung down to his shoulders, and was as coarse as the hair on a horse’s tail. When I first saw him I had a strong desire to have a talk with a man so peculiar and who bore my surname. While he could neither read nor write, I found him intelligent on all matters pertaining to his county, but about things outside of his own immediate neighborhood, he knew next to nothing. He never had been away from home before. Having been taken prisoner, he was compelled to travel. Contrary to his will he had begun to see more of the world. But he was absolutely sure that the “Yanks” had begun the “wicked war.” He informed me, that the North first fired on the South. Nor could I convince him of his error. He was ignorant, and a hot Southerner. His under jaw was square and each ropy hair springing out of his tawny scalp looked as though it were clinched on the inside of his skull. A face so strange and strong, I can never forget. A few days later, in the same hospital, I was urgently asked by a man about thirty-five years of age to help him solve a question of conscience. He was a Quaker by birth and conviction. He had imbibed with his mother’s milk the notion that war was prohibited by the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” By education it had been interwoven with all his thinking. But having at the same time a great abhorrence of human bondage, when, in his neighborhood, scores of men were enlisting to fight a Confederacy, the corner-stone of which had been boastfully declared to be African slavery, the doctrine that war was murder sank so completely into the background that, for a time, he became quite unconscious of it. Aflame with patriotism, along with his neighbors, he volunteered to fight the enemies of the Union. Then came the long, toilsome days of military drill, and the march southward to meet the foe in battle. He had much time for thought. As he reflected, the conviction that no war is justifiable, which, for a season, had been submerged, came up out of the depths of his subconsciousness and reasserted itself. He began to feel utterly out of place. He had taken a solemn oath to do what his conscience utterly forbade. He was in deep distress. There was no one to whom he could unbosom himself. He was among thousands of his countrymen, but felt absolutely alone. His regiment was ordered into battle. For hours with his comrades in arms he loaded and fired; but he could not shoot at his fellow men, so he shot into the air above their heads. But this was a violation of his oath. And after the battle was over and he had been sent to this hospital, what he had done tortured him. Conscience pierced him for having broken his oath as a soldier,