The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-26 00:00:00

A YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR.

The President, in issuing his noble proclamation
setting apart to-morrow as a National Thanksgiv-
ing, has doubtless been mindful of the significance
of the date, and has fitly chosen that the anniver-
sary of the blackest day in our national
annals shall be signalised by a devout re
cognition and grateful remembrance of all the
Providential experiences that fill the interven-
ing twelve months. It is a year ago to-day
an hour before sunrise, that the first gun was fired
on Fort Sumter; a year ago, to-morrow, that its
little band of heroic defenders surrendered to armed
traitors. This, then, is the first anniversary of the
war for the Union. We shall have enough of them
in days to come—anniversaries of triumph—some
few of defeat ; of Hilton Head and Henry, and
Donnelson, and ltoanoke Island, and Newbern, and
Pea Ridge, and Pittsburg Landing, of Lyon's death
and the surrender of Lexington, and of Bull Run,
and of glorious victories yet to be won. But none
of all of them will come to us as this first one comes,
the anniversary of the attack upon Fort Sumter, of
the first felon blow struck in the bad cause of se
cession and rebellion. How vividly we recal the
troubled days which preeadea it the slowly gather-
ing clouds which betokened the approaching storm,
but whose warnings we refused to accept, still
hoping against hope, still confident that madness
could not have so far carried away our Southern
brethren, and that they would yet refrain from fir-
ing the train which they had laid. How we recal
the anxiety with which we watched for daily tid-
ings from Major Anderson and his little band of
heroes, who seemed going down into an ever-
deepening gloom of privation and danger, deserted
by all but Heaven, and then the spring of hope as
we saw the Government at last bestirring itself to
shake off the paralysis into which imbecility
and wickedness had brought it, and taking
imbecility and wickedness had brought it, and tak-
means which showed some prospect of relief to
that brave company, And then, one year ago to-
day, there went over the land those magnetic pul-
sations which proclaimed that the die was cast, that
rebellion bad crossed the Rubicon, that the hands
of traitors had aimed hostile shots at that glorious
banner which their and our fathers had fought for,
and which had been to them and to us the symbol
of all that was truest and best and most hopeful for
humanity. Who can forget the thrill with which
he heard that dreadful announcement, and how the
land started under it ? Who of us can forget how
men went through the streets with pale faces with
rage and teeth set with determination, and how
all the land was filled with the cry of patriotic fer-
vour with which we gathered round the old flag ?
How we flung it to the breeze from every corner of
the streets, how our eyes filled with tears as we
gazed upon its glorious folds P We had never loved
it half enough before, had never half appreciated all
its significant beauty, and now how that beauty
burst forth like the morning from every hill top,
and everywhere throughout the broad North all
traitors and cowards slunk away before it amazed,
abashed, disheartened, discomfited by the outburst
ing patriotism of a people whom they had thought
to he sunk too deep in materialism and selfishness
to be capable of such a sentiment. All this comes
over us fresh as if it were yesterday. And yet,
when we think of all we have lived through since
that day, it seems like a life of centuries. We, who
had gone our daily rounds of business and of plea-
sure, who bad married and given in marriage, who
had bought and sold, built houses and liyed in them,
built ships and sailed them, busying ourselves about
this material prosperity of oars, which, splendid
though it is, has yet little of the heroic in it, we to
be thus suddenly plunged into such a whirlwind of
events, which not even history can make dull, of
sensations running through the whole range from
defeat and disgrace to victory and success coming
in upon us like a flood ! How could such a year fail
to occupy more space in our lives than our whole
lives beside P How much has been crowded into
it! We cheered our patriot hosts as they rushed
from all quarters of the land to the defence of their
Government, so causolessly assailed ; wo heard, with
gleaming eye and close-pressed lip, the dying shout
of that Massachusetts boy in Baltimore, our first
martyr, "All hail to the Stars and Stripes;" we
laboured and we waited alike; we went down
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death after
the fatal field of Bull Run, and nerved ourselves
only with firmer determination to eirry on the con-
flict to the bitter end ; we have followed, with ever-
increasing joy, the movements of our armies, as
they slowly gathered around the strongholds of
rebellion, sweeping them down one after another,
and engulfing them as surely as the rolling
tides of the Bay of Fundy engulf the beach. And
now we stand to look back over the past year and
thank God for it, as the richest, most bounteous
year in our history. A year of privations, but of
privations nobly borne. A year of griefs scattered
broadcast through our peaceful homes, but of griefs
which were counted as nothing for the sake of the
cause. A year of heroines springing up among the
people common as wayside flowers. A year of
growth in firmness and endurance, in courage and
strength, in all those manly qualities which make
a nation truly great. A year of progress such as,
in our shortsightedness, we had thought that only