Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1866-09-18
The u. S. in the Past.

In glancing at what our country was before
the late war; the Baltimore Transcript says that
we were proud of the great statesmen who had
adorned the councils of the nation, and had
equalled in all the attributes of true eloquence,
the most exalted names of the British Parlia-
ment. Webster, of Massachusetts,, and Clay,
of Kentucky, stood side by side, challenging
equal admiration in the Northern and South
ern popular heart. We were proud, too, of the
growing estimation in which our countrymen
were held throughout the world, the powerful
influence, her free institutions exerted in hui
man progress in all parts of the earth, of the
refuge she afforded to the oppressed, the i'm
poverished and suffering of every cline. Here
they came in myriads, seeking city of refuge;
every ocean was white with the sails that bore
them every wind from the East waited those
weary voyagers to the Ararat of liberty that
rose over the western wave. Our national
prosperity astonished mankind. We had ac-
complished in half century the growth in the
Old World of a thousand years. The means of
physical comfort were unparalleled. Poverty
was almost unknown Every man sat in COM
fort and peace under his own vine and fig tree
Labor received its just reward. The poorest
man could obtain the means of educating his
children and anticipate for them better lot
than his own. No fear of war and its horrors
disturbed any human imagination. Europe
| would never dare to assail these distant shores,
and if it should, millions of hearts were ready
to die for that glorious flag, whose mighty orbs
swayed their deepest affections as the moon
sways the tides Of the ocean. Civil war few
anticipated. The mother, whose fair-haired
children gathered about her feet, never, in her
apprehensions of the dark and thorny ways
they might be called upon to travel, dreamed
that they would be torn to pieces on the battle
field Or sleep unburied on the bloody plain
The millenial sun seemed to have risen in our
American sky, and we began to imagine that
some seeds of that peaceful garden, where the
lion and the lamb lay down together, had been
borne to this new continent, and that the lost
Eden of the East would one day bloom in its
| pristine glory upon our Western shores. The
grandeur Of the future of this Republic battles
| the powers of imagination. All that the world
had seen Of power, magnifcence and happiness
| was destined to be thrown into the shade by
the matured glory of America. Is all this lost
| forever? Are the memories and hopes of the
nation, the happiness of its people, the benif
cient, influence of its institutions upon the wei
fare and happiness of its race to be buried be-
yond the hope Of resurrection? Then, indeed
| are we Of all men most miserable. Then may
| we excaim, like the first murderer, my pun
ishment is greater than [ can BEAR" Then
like the fallen Capernaum, we, who were ex
allied to Heaven, shall be cast down to hell
Then, like the fallen angels, we shall sink to al
abyss as deep and despairing as our past was
high and hopeful. Happily, it is for us to say
whether the Paradise lost shall be Paradise
regained IF North and South will but throw
over the gloomy chasm of the four years wal
the rainbow arch Of peace and reconciliation
and allow fraternal and glorious rays to pas
over and sink into our hearts, the sky and the
earth will be filed with new and imperishablt
light and summer and winter, seed time anc
harvest, shall never again be disturbed by the
deluge of war.