Daily national Democrat., 1859-08-17
The Horrors of War.

of disturbing question in the national poll
ties ofthe Old World. Austria is reduced 10
narrower limits. the King Of Sardinia has ac-
quired additional consequence, and France
wears the glory Of being dictator in the
affairs Of Europel But the philanthropist
views the subject in far different light He
remembers the hundred thousand men who
have fallen upon those bloody fields. lie re-
members the widows and orphans that this
wild havoc, this carnival Of death, has made.
lie sees the aged eyes of the gray old mother
look through the cottage door in vain for the
return of her only son, the staff and hope Of
her declining years. He sees her when the
sad news reaches her that he fell, like a brave
man, upon the field of glorg What is such
glory to herr The face that she had so ten.
derly watched in the cradle, rudely stamped
beneath the iron hoof of the pranciug steed ;
the eyes that had laughed in baby joy into
her own, opening with a ghastly stare to the
sun or affordng a rich morsel for the banquet
of the raven and the vulture He sees the
youth and beauty, with the "long, long
thoughts" of him whose image is enshrined
in her soul but whose manly form is mouldcr-
| ing in foreign soil, never nevermore to be
pressed to her bosom. Oh, who can estimate
the broken hearts that lie crushed and bleed
ing in the track of this desolating warl Who
can realize the agonies of those separations
which hope had pronounced temporary but
death made eternal? Who can count the
homes of poverty and misery, left so by the
wholesale slaughter, upon the fields of Monte
bello, Magenta, Builalora and Solferino of
fathers and brothers and sons? Indeed, it is
too dreadful to contemplate. And all this
carnage too. was not the necessary chance of
war in defense of home or country or the
honor of either, but the arbitrary will of
monarchs and despots who staked a certain
number of human lives against the results to
be obtained. The objects they have secured
they consider well worth the blood and the
tears that have been shed Compelled, at
the beck of tyrant, to march to foreign and
hostile ground thousands of honest and use
full men, invaluable to their families, and hav-
ing all the future at stake upon their honesty
and industry at home, have been compelled
to shoulder the musket in a cause in which
they had no part nor lot and leave their
wives and children at the mercy of the rude
winds of fortune. If they returned well and
good. If they fell their nearest and dearest
and their own flesh and blood were left to
suffer and, it might be. to starve.
OF the miseries which come home to the
! hearts of those who have relatives in these
armies which are too often but food for
powder, we can form no adequate judgment
in any general view. 1t is only when we
come to the actual instances before us that
we can truly realize the character Of the evil
For instance, we say that mothers lose their
sons, but we cannot so fully feel what is ex
pressed in that general statement as when we
see,--as is related by visitor to the field of
Solferino, directly after the battle-in the
sack of the dead soldier by his side, letter
from his mother to him, her only son, full of
tenderness and anxiety, and earnestly hoping
for his speedy return to her aged arms. While
she hopes and prays for the happy period
that son lies cold in death, never, never to re
a letter. in q sweet and feminine hand. and
erlmmed full Of all gentle affection and de-
votedne-s. 1t is from the wife of his bosom
the joy Of his youth He will never see her
more. All unconscious of HE bloody end,
she even now perhaps, implores, on bended
knees. the kind Ruler of the Heavens to re-
store him to her loving heart and the embra-
ees of his children. To read these letters. it
may well he imagined, was a task of no ordi
nary character to those who perused them,
and We shall not dwell upon them here. The
Imagination can better supply, than we, with
words the heart moving effect of such epis-
ties in such scene-the dead men, to whom
they were addressed, all lying in ghastly
heaps around.
We say nothing here of the ploughs at
home standing idle in the fed-of the gener.
al cessation of the industrial pursuits-of the
| burdens of taxation t. support the vast armies
which have been raised-of the exactions and
expressions which are the necessary conse-
quence of state of war-of the demoraliza
tion Of society which is also too apt to be
another consequence of the breaking up of
the general order of things. Aside from all
these considerations. the mere sundering OF
the ties Of affection, the crushing out of hopes,
the desolntion of the family hearthstone, the
cxtinguishment of all that is sweetest and
best in neighborhoods and communities. the
sacrifice of the good and true upon the grim
altar of one-man ambition-these are a suf.
tieient reason for condemning the whole
spirit of war like this. May we not have
another such for many long year
We learn from the San Andreas Indepen-
dent, that the Union Tunnel Company on
Douglas Hill, recently cleaned up one hun
drek and forty-six ounces. The dirt was
drifted and placed ready for sluicing by the
labor of sixteen hands, in six days. This claim
is now paying the largest kind of profits with
great regularity.
The Anti-Leeompton Convention of Con-
ira Costa county has made the following
nominations: For Assembly, G. W. Bryant;
Sheriff, Mr.. Dodge Clerk, Mr.. Littlefeld
Treasurer, Mr.. Swain Public Administrators
! Mr. Barber; Assessor. Mr.. Carnenter Sur