The Public Anxiety

It is impossible for any one mind to compute the depth of sorrow and grief and painful anxiety, sown broadcast over our country by the double-dyed villains that through their mad ambition have plunged it into the vortex of misery. As we write hundreds of thousands of hearts are throbbing in painful anxiety at the fate of those whom they love. North and south, east and west, the same terrible feeling of suspense prevails. The West is looking with tearful eyes and throbbing hearts to the result of the recent great battle on the Tennessee river. The East has its eyes on Chesapeake Bay and is tremulously waiting the result of the terrible conflict so soon to be waged there. The South is looking in all directions, for wherever her sons are fighting they are bleeding and dying. Never before was our country in such condition. Fearful will be the penalty visited upon the guilty heads of the leaders of this ungodly rebellion. If they escape immediate punishment by fleeing the country, justice will seek them out at last though she track them to the uttermost bounds of earth. Remorse like a vulture will prey upon their vitals – they will live despised of men and die rejected of God.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, April 14, 1862, p. 2