To-day all is quiet, save now and then a cheer caused by some rumor created for the occasion by some mischievous soldier. In the evening a chilling rain commences to fall. The night is dark, the winds keep sighing like some crushed spirit. We sit by a slow glimmering campfire and think of the happy years when the country was at peace; we think of the clouds "of war that hang over a land that has been looked to as a land of promise by the chained and crushed ones of earth. We look around us and behold rows of muskets, which seem to tell us that ere long they will be pointed at the breasts of men, and why, oh! why? can it thus be that men of one common blood[,] brothers of one common family, will engage in deadly strife and seek each other's life? But so it has ever been through all the intricate course of empires down to the present time; first a conflict of ideas, then a conflict of arms. War seems to be a nation's highest tribunal, and a fierce ordeal it is through which to arrive at justice, but nations must pass through this ordeal. The conflict between right and wrong, between liberty and slavery, have produced champions and advocates who have been unwilling to yield, hence a rush to arms to settle the controversy.
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