The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-04-27
Three Years from Fort Sumter.
BY w. j. POTTER.

Just three years ago TODAY our slowly believ-
ing ears first began to credit the intelligence that
Fort Sumter bombarded by treasons cannon
had fallen. First there was depression and
gloom in the land !; but through the hours ofthat
Sabbath mighty spirit was at work in the
hearts of the people, and the next mornings sun
sent up it's beams from the Atlantic upon a new
nation. Bunker Hill was a defeats but it was a
defeat that told the British King and Parliament
that they had reused spirit in the American
coIonists that gunpowder could not conquer
Fort Sumter defeat; but it was defeat
from which the nation one day will date its de-
Hverance When Major Anderson and his gal
liant band marched forth from the battered fort,
sa1uted with military honors retaining their
arms, and carrying the flag, though tattered and
smoke-besmeared, still proudly erect, they went
not to defeat, but to conquest and that march
was prophecy of national victory. Slavery,
through its madness, had for moment trium-
phed but the nation was saved.
Three years ago yesterday the nation sunk
in lethargic sleep,-it seemed almost the sleep
of death. Patriotism, conscience, heroism, JUS
tice, humanity-all the nobler sentiments and
ideas seemed paralized. Instruction OPEN
ly and deliberately preparing it's knife for the
breast of our country-an Instruction, too, in
defence of crime against God and man which is
" the sum of all villanes'' while hardly an eff
fortwas being made or an influential voice raised
to prevent the damning deed. We talk of these
dark days of war; but the darkest days this
country has ever known, the days that were
most wearsome, Notwithstanding, infamous the
days which we shall most wish that history could
forget are the hundred days Immediately pre-
ceding the attack on Fort Sumter when we
were timidIy talking of compromise by giving
one half of the territories of the Union to bond
age and guaranteeing to slavery new constitu-
tional protection; when leading public men of
all parties seemed to vie with each other as to
who should stoop lowest to receive the traitorous
kiss of rebellion; when Northern journals of
wide circulation gravely proposed the Montgom-
cry constitution basis of peace; when treas
on was working its diabolical plots unresisted in
the Federal Cabinet and Senate and using the
national Executive to carry out its purposes;
when the slave power almost avoided the neces-
sity of establishing an insurrectionary govern
ment by successfully usurping and converting
to its needs the government at Washington;
when Northern commerce and manufacturers,
the monied interests generally, and churches
even the knee whining for peace-not
the peace of the Gospel, but peace at any price
for the sake of trade and selfish quiet; when the
legally elected President of the Republic was
only saved from assassination at the hand of
conspirators by being struggled into the Capital
through the ingenuity of Railroad Superinten-
dent when the new administration, finding
Treasury empty, the army and navy scattered
to distant points, half of their officers involved
in treason forts, arsenals, and navy yards stolen
from it's possession was rather cautiously in
quiring what the country would allow than at
tempting to inaugurate vigorous policy of its
own against the insurrectiOn; when, in case that