 about Holmes saying, you know, nothing gave me so much pleasure, is from Altshuler, and Altshuler further describes how radically the war deprived Holmes not only of faith in abolitionist values, but of any values whatsoever. He became, according to Altshuler, a kind of Nietzschean nihilist who looked down on the masses with aristocratic disdain and yet thought that they had to be deferred to or open violence would