THE WAR by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1862

THE WAR.

By Editor

A FEW weeks ago it was proclaimed with a great flourish of trumpets that the armies of the nation were full, and orders were given to stop recruiting and the enlistment of volunteers. Now it is announced that a call is to be made for a hundred thousand additional men, to be used "as a reserve." A sudden change seems to have come over the administration, and they appear to be convinced that the struggle in which we are engaged is not to be terminated in any thirty or sixty days, as some of the leading men at the capital have been fond of asserting.

Why is it that a call is to be made for one hundred thousand additional men, from the loyal population of America? Why is this large number to be added to the half million, more or less, who have already been called from the field and the workshop, from the hills of New England, the valleys of New York, and the prairies of the West? It is because the large army now in the field has been terribly diminished in numbers by the bullets of the rebels on the battle field, the exposures and hardships of the march, or the still more fatal diseases of the camp. We wish the people could know the sum total of the loyal lives lost since April, 1861, in the cause of the country. We do not believe the administration would dare to publish it, but we believe that it would not be a unit below fifty thousand men. Not less than this number can have perished from the various casualties of the war, and many others have been mutilated, had their health permanently impaired, and their capacity for peaceful labor almost entirely destroyed. There are said to be now seven thousand sick and wounded in General McClellan's army. Gen. Halleck's is suffering terribly from disease. The epidemics of the southern coast are beginning to attack the armies of Burnside and Hunter. Every day swells the fatal record. Every day brings an addition to the causes of mortality, and it is to supply this loss that a hundred thousand more men are to be called forth.

And still the administration hesitates to avail itself of the services of the able-bodied men among four million of slaves longing for freedom. It revokes Gen. Hunter's order, by which the million of slaves of the very focus and heart of the rebellion are invited to aid us. It is itself deluded, or it willfully deludes the country, by exaggerating the advantage gained over the rebels, while they are successful in prolonging the delay, prosecuting the Fabian system on which they rely for decimating our armies, for worrying the North out with a prolonged contest, and for proving to the leading nations of Europe, the impossibility of their being conquered, and inducing them to intervene and acknowledge Southern independence. They continue their worse than savage atrocities, firing on flags of truce, killing the wounded and helpless, mutilating the dead, and hanging the loyal men in the slave States, while they continue to show the same defiance, the same desperate hatred of the Union as ever.

Would that the long muster roll of the loyal dead could be distributed into every neighborhood and family in the free States; would that the long procession of the maimed and wounded could pass in review before those who have remained in their quiet homes, saved by the valor of these men from the invasion of a cruel foe and the untold horrors of secession warfare; would that we could all pass through the various hospitals of the army and see the sick and the suffering stretched on their beds, many of them never to rise again; would that we could see the numberless orphans and widows, the bereaved families, the broken hearts that this war has already created. Could all these come home sensibly to the North as the imagination can body them forth, we believe that on reading this fresh call upon the patriotism and valor of its fathers and sons and brothers, it would cry as one man:

"It is time that all paltering shall cease; it is time to strike home; it is time to call to our aid all men in all parts of the country who can aid in putting down the rebellion; it is time to put into vigorous exercise that severity which is the truest mercy; it is time to proclaim freedom to the slave, and thus strike treason to the heart."

How long, oh how long, must we wait for the North to awake to a sense of its condition, and demand of its officers that they take the last inevitable step, the deferring of which only increases the difficulties of our position, and adds to the terrible sacrifice of life and happiness we are making every day.—[New Bedford, Mass.] Republican Standard.