Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1901-01-24

Nobody can understand as Wen az
the veterans of both sides VINO Wen
| into the war early and came out OF y
late what a vast amount Of absurdltJ
there was connected with 1t in Its
earlier stages.
1t was perfectly natural; 1t was IN
eyitable that this should be so. Forty
millions Of people to whom war was
hardly more than a tradition ana q
story were suddenly plunged into the
greatest armed conflict Of modern
times. Everybody was green at the
business; the exceptions In favor OF the
poor little regular army and the SUD,
vivors of the Mexican war were so few
as not to leaven the mass. The people
and the soldiers had everything to
learn; and the amount of practical fool
ishness which they went through with
in order to learn how to maintain war
and how to fight was som eth1ng amaz-
ing. We can all afford to laugh at 1t
now, although in those days the silliest
ideas and suggestions were treated
with the utmost seriousness.
Perhaps there was never greater folly
than that contained in newspaper gas
cOnade, North and South, in the first
year of the struggle. The press of to-
day is very different thing from what
it was then-and the greatest educator
was the war itself. The enterprise and
push that make the American newspa-
per so great to-day were fostered and
developed by the necessity of putting
the daily news of the great events of
the time before the public, and Of doing
it promptly. But heplans put forth by
editors on one side for crushing the re-
bellion, and on the other for debating
independence in Washington! Men
Who ne'er set squadron in the field,
Nor the divisions of a battle knew,
would write and print with amazing
conceit about what the armies should
do, and the people read and believed
their twaddle, until the experience Of
the progressing conflict taught them
that war was a trade, a business by it.
self, to be learned, and thoroughly
AVdAA Ny llOSC WIN WOu1u prevail ALI
it, and that amateurs and noyices had
no business with it.
Certain stock expressions invented
by imaginative newspaper men had
great run, until it was discovered that
they were very weak inventions, and
then we heard no more of them. The
anaconda" business was the best spec
linen of this kind of thing. Certain
jealous and enthusiastic Northern
presses discovered that the Union
armies were an immense anaconda;
that it was only necessary to put them
In motion, when they would encircle
the Confederacy, and resistlessly crush
1t in short order. This was very pretty
as a poetfcal image; but it was soon
discovered that the Confederacy would
not lie still and be crushed, but would
return blow for blow, and this figure
OF speech was dropped.
Then came the .masked-batterv,,
craze. Everywhere that our armies
were likely to go in the South, masked
batteries" were to be expected. The
press was full of warnings on the sub
Ject, and the people, if not the soldiers.
had dire apprehension on this head.
But this fever quickly ran out.
And the intelligent contraband''-
VINO that had got respectable growth
IN 1861 can have forgotten this fertile
source of newspaper INSTRUMENTATION?
Inc intelligent traband!'-why.
ne rose almost to the dignity of an his
torlcal character in those days. He
was continually reaching Washington
with reliable information" that Rich
mond had been evacuated: that Jeff
Davis was sick; that General Reaure-
gafd was dead; and similar improbable
reports, all of which were greedily
swallowed by credulous thousands who
pleased themselves by thinking that
the war was to have some sudden and
termination.
Any reader who may think that al,
the foolishness of the time was con-
nned TO the North is referred to an
instructive little volume, called "a
hepeIs Recollections," by George r,arv
Eggleston. He will learn from #
among other things, how at the militia
musterings IN Virginia to prepare for
war, which followed secession, every
soiuler brought servant, and some
brought two; and how each private
wore epauiets. He will learn about
the Bombastes Furioso speech-making
with which small lawyers deluged the
old dominion before the people set
tled down to condition of actual war
1alr specimen of which was the ora
llon OF the militia colonel who went to
hlcnmond, found that he had no mis-
SION there whatever, and could get no
pace, and then returned home and
hade a speech at the railroad station.
n which he said that he had been in
with the authorities; that
Wnlie It would not be proper for him