Читать книгу The Seventh Regiment: A Record - George L. Wood - Страница 4

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On a gloomy day in April, 1861, the telegraph flashed the news over the country that Fort Sumter, a fortress belonging to the United States, had been fired upon by a body of rebels, and thus inaugurating all the horrors of civil war.

By the great mass of people, civil war in our hitherto peaceful country was entirely unlooked for. It burst so suddenly, that the entire country was convulsed. The people had become so accustomed to clamor in Congress and elsewhere, that they looked upon these threats to dissolve the Union as mere bravado.

After the first clash of arms at Fort Sumter, both North and South drew back in alarm, as if in fear of the coming storm. The Southern people, however, better prepared by education for scenes of strife and bloodshed, received the news of the inauguration of civil war with less alarm than did those of the North. The latter received it with a fearful dignity, conscious of the power to crush the rebellion. The South, with that arrogance that becomes her so well, expected to make an easy conquest. Long-continued exercise of power in national matters, had taught her to look upon the people of the Free States as her inferiors, needing but a master-stroke for their subjugation—willing to lay down their arms, and seek safety in dishonor. They had taken us for a race of cowards, because we had given way to their selfish demands in our public councils, for the sake of peace. To be sure, we had some daring spirits in Congress who met these bullying traitors, making them feel the full force of Northern valor. But these were isolated cases, and won the respect of the Southern people to the persons of the actors rather than to the North as a people. They looked upon these spirited examples as rather proving the fact of our want of chivalry than otherwise, and therefore were not corrected in their false estimate of a people whom they were about to meet on bloody fields.

One reason the South had for cherishing so mean an opinion of the North as a military power, was on account of her having entirely neglected the cultivation of the art of war. She had so few representatives in the army and navy, that they were both almost entirely within the control of the South.

This control the latter had exercised for years, until her people came to look upon themselves as the only persons in the country fit to bear arms. They flattered themselves that they were the army, and we but a rabble, to be dispersed beyond the hope of reorganization at the first clash of arms. But in this strife, like all others where aristocratic privilege comes in contact with the freedom of democracy, these arrogant lords were to meet with a bitter disappointment; they were to be made to respect the strong muscle and brave hearts of the so-styled plebeian North.

This avowed hostility of the South to the North had caused the former to take a military direction, and forced her into a course of policy which, however outrageous it might appear, was yet a matter of necessity in her attempt at independence. The first step was to put herself upon a war-footing. This she had been perfecting for several years. The next was to get the Government so in her control as to make it powerless in the incipient stages of the rebellion, that it might gain sufficient strength to withstand the first shock, and thus gain precedence.

During a period of thirty years the South was gradually assuming a war-footing. The militia was organized; independent companies were formed with no warlike object, as was generally supposed, but really to resist any encroachment of the Federal Government upon what the leaders deemed the rights of the Southern people. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency was not the cause of civil war, but only its apology. There had existed in the minds of the Southern people a desire for an independent government, which would give the aristocracy a firmer footing. In other words, the Federal Government was too democratic. But it was necessary that these conspirators have some apparently good reason for civil war; else the people who were at heart right, would desert them at a time when they were most needed. The time for the inauguration of civil war was therefore most fitly chosen. The people were made to believe that the inauguration of President Lincoln was a sufficient reason; and thus the dream of thirty years of these disunionists was at last realized. The apology for the war had been substituted for its cause, and the mass of the Southern people made eager to meet those on bloody fields whom they were led to suppose were about to deprive them of their rights and precipitate them into ruin.

There is always a class styled the nobility in every nation. But the true nobility in America is that class who have won that distinction by noble deeds; who are great, not in titles and garters of nobility, but in great achievements: not that class who base their right to that title upon the number and character of human beings they may own. The American people hold that distinction must be given to those by whom it is merited; and that it cannot be the subject of monopoly. Each person, however mean his birth, has the same right to enter the list for the prize as he who was born of a higher rank. It is this freedom, which is given to all, that has caused the Northern States to make such rapid progress towards civilization and greatness; and it is the crippling of this great principle that has cast a shadow over the enslaved South. One great object of the leaders of the South had been to arrest the rapid growth of the North, which, they were conscious, would one day throw them into a helpless minority, for they could not themselves keep pace with this rapid progress. Their ambition was to have capital control labor, while the laboring classes were to be subservient to the capitalists, and a sort of serfdom forced upon them. The wealthy class were to live in luxury and indolence upon the unrequited toil of their slaves. These facts, the leaders of the wicked rebellion, which they were to inaugurate, were careful to conceal from their followers. This was so well done, that the people of the South thought that these imaginary wrongs of the Government, which had been pictured to them by their masters, was the true reason of their attempt at separation from the Union. It is hoped that the masses will soon see the difference between serving a privileged class of aristocrats, and being members of a free Republic.