Go ahead, tell me that is not explicit sexual imagery.
Marching into Pennsylvania was like entering a different world.
And marching into Virginia was like entering a different world for Pennsylvanians. They were shocked at southern poverty, ignorance, and brutality toward the slaves.
...It's farms looked incredibly rich...the Confederate soldier now was in a land of plenty. ...
And what comes with languid, bored wealth?
The citizens seemed to be remarkably lukewarm, as a matter of fact. It had been different in western Maryland, where Union sentiment was robust...
In the 1864 presidential election Pennsylvania was the second-closest contested state. Lincoln beat McClellan by 3.5%.
These Pennsylvania farmers appeared to be apathetic and some of them said openly that they did not care much who won as long as they themselves were let alone. The rank and file grew confident.
These Pennsylvanians were too well-off, too self-centered, too anxious to save what they had; they were not at all war-like, and Federal soldiers as well as Confederates made pointed remarks about their seeming lack of patriotism.
The Pennsylvania farmers, criticized by friend and by foe...could easily have made their own defiant Southern cry: "All we ask is to be let alone."
Indeed, as James Carville says to this day, "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between"! McClellan won my home, Cambria, County, by fifteen percentage points in 1864. lol
In all of this--in the apathy, the self-interestedness, the comparatively effortless prosperity, the unambition, humility, and non-aggression--we see the influence of the Quaker religious sect that settled Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians are not pushy! lol. All of these in combination are the reason the only son of Pennsylvania to be president was James Buchanan, and really, no Pennsylvania has made a serious effort in attempt since!
Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, "Mirage on the Skyline", 167-69.
