ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Louis Menand's claims are excessive in some respects, plain wrong. It is true that Oliver Wendell Holme’s worldview, including his understanding of manliness, had changed as a result of the war. But Holmes's faith in manliness as a moral ideal – the same faith that he had exhibited as a college student – basically endured the Civil War and, actually, found stronger purchase thereafter. A fine illustration is Holmes's most well-known speech, "The Soldier's Faith." It was delivered on Memorial Day in 1895 to Harvard's graduating class. In "The Soldier's Faith," Holmes started by taking measure of how the world had changed since he was an undergraduate. In "The Soldier's Faith," like in much else that Holmes penned, he mercurially ambled from one concept to another, with little concern for elucidating their connections. While written in prose, "The Soldier's Faith" was guided by the sensibility of a ponderous poet, not a disciplined logician.
