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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.

Potato Rot.—A writer from Maine, under date of Aug. 28, says, “I am sorry to announce to you that a great calamity has befallen the industrious farmers of Maine, viz., the total destruction of the potato crop by that great scourge, the ‘potato rot.’ Its operations are most singular. The day before the disease struck the vines they were perfect and promising; the next morning whole fields appeared as if a scorching fire had run through them, the foliage black and crisped. In one week after, the potato in the hill became discolored and was soon a mass of decayed matter, fit for food for neither man nor beast. From what I can learn, the disease has swept over the whole State.”

Forewarned, Forearmed.—In an article on the situation and prospects in this country, Harper’s Weekly of Sept. 14, 1867, says:—

We learn, upon good authority, that there are ten thousand men in Maryland called militia, armed and under the command of Rebel officers. Not long before Mr. Stanton was suspended, a requisition came from the Governor of Maryland to the War Department for batteries, which the Secretary refused. For what purpose is such a body of men so armed and so officered? We do not mention this to excite a foolish alarm, but an alarm which is not foolish. It may be an untrue story, but it is not in the least improbable that the President intends some action hostile to Congress. It may be in the guise of resistance to the process and results of impeachment. It may be in pursuance of a plan to issue an amnesty and to assemble a new Congress. The wildness of the plan and its futility do not make it improbable. If the President knew the feeling of the country he might pause. But he does not know it. He can not know it. He is surrounded and led by men who misrepresent it; and to General Grant, the true friend of the country in the Cabinet, he does not listen.

The times are grave. No man should deceive himself or “deride,” with the New York Tribune, the imminence of trouble. To be forewarned against danger we must be forearmed. We need not, indeed, imagine that we are already Mexicanized; but we ought certainly to reflect that, in a revolutionary period, when the country still trembles with civil war, and peaceful order is not yet restored, a desperate, ignorant, and obstinate Chief Magistrate may plunge us into very serious difficulty.

A Reminiscence of the War.—The scene on the 6th of October, 1864, when Sheridan’s army deployed across the forty miles of valley and moved slowly northward, touching the Blue Ridge on the east, the Alleghany on the west, was of the most thrilling character that this historic region has to remember. Almost four years of war had left this garden of the continent as beautiful and fertile as the peace it threw away. The barns and bins were bursting with good cheer. Stone walls that the armies could not burn, protected the high rolling villages. All the harvests had been gathered. Men and women sat waiting for the frosts to come, and snow to cap the mountain spires, that they might glide into the gossip of winter nights, and see their boys come home on furlough to share the apples roasted in the fire and the blossoming of popcorn on the hearth. The cattle were lowing in the straw; the pigs were plump for the butcher; the horses and mules were munching for the long rest of half the year. Across the stubbled upland the white turnpikes leaped from crest to crest, vanishing in the mountain gaps, or leading straight as beams from the North Star into the land of the invader. Like a more baneful beam of a more lurid tint, the Army of the Shenandoah unfolded, and out of its forty darkening miles the flames of mills, and barns, and railway ties leaped up. Column and plumes moved northward, as if the forces of Sampson swept on with their fire-brands blazing, and before them cattle and mules, and sheep and teams were driven like the funeral of the animal creation; behind them were women wringing their hands, and a pall of smoke like a cloud on the mountains. The streams by night were of burnished gold, palpitating with their reflected flashes, and by day the broad marching dragon for the Potomac, breathing gray and cindery. When he had passed, the summer had gone out of the winter nights, the familiar beasts were departed; only the dogs howled to see the women weeping.—G. A. T. in the N. Y. Tribune.

—In a free nation it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision, but from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.—Montesquieu.