WEST POINT, January 12, 1861.
MY DEAR SISTER: This is examination-week. My reports have not been quite so good as you may have desired, but I shall be quite satisfied with the results of the examinations. .. Truly troublous times are upon us. We are at sea, with no chart to guide us. What the end will be, our wisest statesmen can not foresee. The South is gone, and the question is, Will the Government coerce her back? The attempt, I think, will be made, but we can not predict the result. Southern men are brave, and will fight well, but their means for prosecuting a long war wanting. Four States are now out of the Union, and South Carolina has fired the first gun. She has resisted the entrance of the Star of the West to Fort Sumter, and, no doubt, there will be bloodshed before you receive this, since the Brooklyn (man-of-war) is on the way to Charleston, and is bound to re-enforce that fort. . . . Members of my class continue to resign. The corps is already sensibly reduced in numbers, and, from present Prospects we will almost be reduced to a moiety. Should the United States officers from the seceding States resign, there will be many vacancies, and, very probably, they would be filled by graduating us soon. . . . In my next letter I will try to say nothing upon secession, but it is the absorbing topic of thought at present.
SOURCE: Peter Smith Michie, The Life and Letters of Emory Upton, p. 30-1
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