The problem was settled for all ages in 1865. The American Nation rose from the ruins of War like a young giant. Grasping the hand of the North and the South, it clasped them together with the grip of brotherhood and the sacred pledge, "United we stand; divided we fall." Long live America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! The vast armies, "strong enough to have conquered a hemisphere, vanished like a vision and the men who fought side by side through the perils of four years of Civil War, laid down their arms, changed their uniforms of blue and gray for the apparel of everyday life, and took up once more the peaceful occupations they had abandoned to serve their country." The Spring of 1865 can never be forgotten by the men who went through it. It was a time of intense excitement and overflowing enthusiasm which carried itself almost to pandemonium. The war cameras, which had perpetuated the last wonderful scenes of the conflict, were taken to Washington and New York, and the Summer fell upon a peaceful people. It is the avowed mission of these pages to lay before the present generation the vision of War in all its horror that those who look upon them may pledge themselves to the furtherance of the day "when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a thing could have been;" the day when "those two immense groups, the United States of America, and the United States of Europe," and the United States of Asia and of Africa, "will be seen placed in the presence of each other, extending the hand of fellowship across the oceans, exchanging their produce, their commerce, their industries, their arts, their genius; clearing the earth, peopling the desert, improving creation under the eye of the Creator, and uniting for the good of all, these two irresistible and infinite powers--the fraternity of men and the power of God!"