If then we estimate the total mortality of our troops including those slain and such as afterwards died of their wounds, and those who have expired in Mexico and at home of diseases contracted in camp, at twenty thol'- sand, we shall be in httle danger of exaggerating the amount. If we next turn our regards to the wives and children and relatives of these twenty thousand, we find 19* a still expanding multitude upon whom the war has brought lamentation and woe.
Once more follow in imagination the survivors, on their return home. Mark the germinating seeds of moral and physical disease implanted by war in their constitutions, and about to b^ar bitter and deadly fruits.
In that approaching day when the Judge of quick and dead shall make inquisition for blood, those who have kin- dled the flames of war, will be called to justify the num- berless and immeasurable evils both spiritual and tempo- ral they have inflicted upon their fellow-men, upon their enemies as well as upon their own countrymen.