Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1899-04-15
TWO HISTORIC SHOTS.
They Will Always Be Identified
with Our National Life.
One Was the Cannon shot Which Rang
Out from MouItrie, the other
.the Pistol Shot That Killed
Abraham Lincoln.
Especial Washington Letter.l

Especial Washington Letter.I
Great men and great events pass be-
fore us so rapidly in kaleidoscope re-
view, like the moving pictures of a
kinetoscope, that men of modern
times must needs read rapidly, think
quickly and act with celebrity in
order to keep pace with the acts and
scenes in the drama of human life.
There was cannon shot fired from
Fort Moultrie at Fort Sumter in the
early days of 1861 which changed the
destinies of this republic. 1t rever-
berated throughout the world. The
men and women who were heads OF
families then have nearly all gone TO
that bourne whence no traveller e'er re-
turns. All readers of history know OF
it, but there was another cannon shot
fred from battery beneath Palmet-
to flag some weeks earlier of winch
few people have heard or read. 1t was
fired at a vessel called the Star OF the
West, as il was bringing supplies TO
Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.
That shot did not precipitate civil war,
for there were commissioners and com
mittees selected and appointed after
wards to avert war between the
states. But the shot which WIS fired at
the flag waving over Fort Sumter
caused an internecine struggle of four
years duration.
The men and women born between
the years ls6l and 1865 have no personal
rccolections of the tragic dai y occur
rences of those years. To-day they are
the leaders and managers in the fore
front of affairs, They read of the civil
war as they read of the Mexican war,
the war of 1912 and the war of the reyo-
luton; wars in which they took no
part directly or indirectly. True, there
were boys and young men then, who are
fathers and grandfathers now, who tell
TO families and friends incidents of
those days, thereby making more vivid
their reading of history. But the stall
| wart men of to-day and the mothers OF
the rising generation have no personal
| knowledge of those events. The writer
is one of the mere boys of '61 who has
personal rccolectons of the trials and
triumphs of those days.
The people of the north and of the
south eagerly bought the daily papers
| not merely to see which side hid wor
in battle, but TO see whether "oul
| John" or "our JIM or others OF oul
| families had fallen beneath the leader
| and iron hail which the contending
forces were hurling against each other
| We suffered not only the joys of victory
| or the sorrows of defeat, but in every
| home and at every hearthstone ther,
was a father, a mother, a brother or !
sister reading of loved ones who wer'
diving tonight on the old CAM
| ground" far from the reach of loving
hands. writhing hearts and loving lips
Yes. the shot which rang out from
| Moultrie rang around the world ant
| convulsed this nation. 1t was followed
bv voleys innumerabe for four Ions
wears until the end came: the end wei
coined by both north and south. Wei
! coined by the north because of the in
| sured permanence of the federal union;
welcomed by the south because it wa,
the conclusion of privation, suffering
and disaster. To-day the survivors o.
the contcnding armies and their chill
dren and children's children all rejoic,
| that the end was as it was.
But the shot above all others which
outriyaled in tragic hypnotism all 9th
er events was the shot from the pisto
of an assassin which rang ont in Ford !.