Can’t Laugh!

The news of the battle at Pittsburgh Landing has knocked all facetiousness out of ye Local. With the report ringing in our ears that three of our Regiments were captured and that six others were decimated by the butcheries of War, we can’t laugh on any subject. There are times when fun is an innocent enjoyment, but not now. The crisis of this war is reached. On the operations of the next few days depend the most stupendous results. A victory at Yorktown and a victory at Corinth will terminate the war in less than two months. A defeat in one or both these places will protract the war indefinitely. There has not been a more perilous conjuncture of events since the fall of Sumter, than at this moment!

– Published in the Daily State Register, Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, April 17, 1862