Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-25

that they had brought upon themselves
and their country the retribution at hand.
But what of those who were denied the
safety of the b~omb-proofs, those left in
Atlanta by the men who were fighting to
perpetuate the manacles of a brother in
poverty, ignorance and toil-a fellow
worm? What Of those thus abandoned
10 the bowling horrors of the can
nonade? What of the unsheltered
poor? Listen-homeless and hungry.
Ignorant and uuguided, old and
inirm, women and children, ill-clad
girls and famished boys, women with babes
in arms and women big with child. a
breathless and brainless mob, rushed to
and fro-hither, thither, like leaves in a
whirlwind. God what a scene Blanched
sith fear, bewildered and confused. rem
dered idiotic by terror, all seeking cover
OF some kind, in sewers and cellars and
holes in the ground, and no one under
standing the woe from which they fled. or
why woe should have fallen upon them.
Alas, for the poor They were unable
to comprehend themselves much less the
ethics of the mighty problem, in the solu-
ton of which they had become unwilling
ly involved. They were unable to com
prehend that the curse of slavery, recoil-
ing upon the land, had fallen upon its pro-
moters; that it had fallen upon all-upon
those whose intelligence armed and ar.
rayed the Ignorant for It's perpetuati0n.
and upon those whose ignorance gave to
intelligence the power to work its will.
They were unable to understand the law
of compensation, Gods lex ~tdiioas. the
eternity OF justice; thes law and its lash
that ooner or later must oyertake and
fall upon a nation as it falls upon
a man. A law from which nothing can
escape, the force of which no power can
defy, the scrutiny of which no cunning
can evade. And, as when man in his in
dividual person violates himself and chal-
lengee that law, every source of pasn must
render its moity of r~etribution and since
physical suffering is the penalty of phvsi-
cal transgression, and mans baser or physi-
cal attributes must suffer most, so 1t is with
a nation. When a nation violates itself it
must account to the law Of compensation,
and IN that accounting all its elements
must bleed, weep, suffer. But since physi-
cal suffering forms the bulk of the penalty
to be paid, that portion Of a nation that il
mostly physcal-the masses, the poor. the
mob-must suffer most.
OF this bombardment Sherman has but
little to say, with an evident desire to avoid
details, to hide or pass over the measure
less suffering of the poor of Atlanta.
Those who were IN authority on the Con-
federate side have also but little to say.
and while that little is in the nature of a
screen, yet, read between the lines, enough
of truth may be detected to indicate the
horrors of the situation. In his Memoirs
page POO Hood saws: "The 9th was
made memorable by the most furious can
nonade which the city sustained dur
ing the siege. Women and children
fled into cellars, and were there forced to
seek shelter a greater length of time than
at any period of the bonbardment." And
again, page POP: "The bombardment of
the city continued till the 10Th of August.
1t was painful, yet strange, to mark how
expert grew the old men, m and chill
dren in building their little underground
forts, in which 10 fly for safety during the
storm of shell and shot. Often mid the
darkness of night were they constrained to
seek refuge in these dungeons beneath the
earth"