Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1901-01-25


late what n vast amount of absurdity
there was connected with it in it's
earlier stages.
1t was perfectly natural: 1t was in
evitable that this should be SO. Forty
millions of people to whom war was
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 SUBJ
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 something 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 a 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 today We're fostered and
developed by the necessity of putting
the daily news of the great events of
the time before the public, and of doing
1T promptly. But the plans 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 i'll the field,
Nor the divisions of 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 Il trade, Il business by it.
self, to he learned. and thoroughly
learned, by those who would prevail in
it, and that amateurs and novices had
no business with it,
Certain stock expressions invented
by imaginative newspaper men had a
great run. until it was discovered that
they were very weak inventions. and
then we heard 10 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 We're an immense anaconda:
that 1T 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 poetical 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- battery"
craze. Everywhere that our armies
were likely to go in the South, "masked
batteries" We're 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"-
who that had got respectable growth
in 1861 can have forgotten this fertile
source of newspaper misinformation?
The Intelligent OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES.
he rose almost to the dignity of an his
torical 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 Beaurc-
gard 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
semi-miraculous termination.
Any reader who may think that all
the foolishness of the time was con-
fined to the North is referred to an.
instructive little volume, called ga
Rebels Recollections," by George Cary
Eggleston. He will learn from it.
among other things, how at the militia.
musterings in Virginia to prepare for
war, which followed secession. every
soldier brought servant. and some
brought two; and how each private
wore epaulets. He will learn about
the Bombastes Furioso speech-making
with which small lawyers deluged the
Old Dominion before the people set
tied down to condition of actual war.
fair specimen of which was the ora
ton Of the militia colonel who went to
Richmond, found that he had no mis-
sion there whatever, and could get no
place, and then returned home and
made speech at the railroad station,
in which he said that he had been in
consultation with the authorities; that
while it would not be proper for him
to reveal even to these, his patriotic
countrymen. the plans confided to
him, he might at least say to them that
the government within ten days would
have $4,000 men in line on the Poto.
mac, and then, with perchance bloody
but very brief struggle, this over