Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3, March, 1864

These cliffs are reached by a charming walk through a beech wood, and are distant about a mile from the Laurel House. A longer and still somewhat rough path was opened thither last summer from the Mountain House. But we should never end were we to characterize all the beautiful spots, the entrancing walks and drives to be found amid these cool and healthful slopes and plateaus. A difference of at least ten degrees is felt between the mountain resorts and the villages on the river bank, and the air is inexpressibly fresh and invigorating.

These mountains have also a very interesting flora. The oak, beech, birch, chestnut, hickory, maple, ash, hemlock—pines, black, white, and yellow—spruces, fir, and balsam, are among the most widely spread trees; and of fruits, the blackberry, gooseberry, raspberry, whortleberry or blueberry, and strawberry, grow in profusion and of fine flavor. Violets, anemones, liverworts, the fairy bells of the Linnea Borealis, the fragrant stars of the Mitchella or partridge berry, the trailing arbutus, Houstonia, the laurel, honeysuckle, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, bottle gentian, white and blue, purple orchids, willow herb, golden rod, immortelles, asters in every variety, St. John's wort, wild turnip, Solomon's seals, wild lilies of the vale, fire lilies, Indian pipe, with other flowers, ground pines, and varieties of moss and ferns innumerable, border the winding woodpaths and secluded roads. There are many regions in America more grand than that of the Catskills, but none, we think, more easily and gratefully compensatory to a careful survey.

The life of the soldier is one of constant anxiety and suspense. He never knows with any certainty to-day what he shall have to do to-morrow. Upon seemingly the greatest calm may suddenly burst the most terrific storm. There is little incentive to thought, except of that practical kind which directs the activities of the soldier's perilous life. Here we are, thousands of us, an acting mass rather than an assemblage of thinking individuals. Indeed, it is not strictly military to think; implicit and unquestioning obedience is the law. When the order was finally given on Monday night (September 21st) for the whole army to fell back on Chattanooga, the writer remarked:

'Well, if we shall not have to go any farther—if we can hold Chattanooga, we are not defeated;—it is even a victory, and we have won Chattanooga at the battle of Chickamauga.'

'We want none of your speculations,' retorted our Prussian commander; 'it is a soldier's business to obey, and not to think.'

But, it is hardly natural for an American soldier to execute a movement without inquiring the wherefore. And if we are marched over mountains, and down the Lookout at Alpine Pass, within a few miles of Rome; and then marched back again, up the perilous steep, and northward to Stevens's Gap, and down again;—why, even common soldiers, without the evidence of brains which there is, or ought to be, in shoulder straps, inquire of each other for the strategic value there may be in all this marching and countermarching, and find it hard to believe that it was all provided for in the original programme.

But in a still higher sense is the American soldier given to thinking. He is quite likely to have an opinion as to the origin and cause of the war—as to the issues involved therein, and the results which it is likely to bring about. There is, moreover, a multiplicity of views, and not the unanimity of dulness.

The causes, the issues, the results of the war—momentous themes! and likely to be thoroughly canvassed by those whom they so vitally concern—the American citizen and our citizen soldiery.

The causes, issues, and results of the war are so intimately related that we can scarcely think of one without also thinking of the others. The causes are more especially a thing of the past—they already belong to history: the results belong more particularly to the future; the issues pertain to the present. It is these with which we have more immediately to do, and which it behooves us, as intelligent actors in the great drama, to understand. We should not be indifferent to results, and we are not; but if there are real issues of right and wrong involved in the contest, and we are in the right, we may rest assured that the results of a successful prosecution of the war will be worthy of all our sacrifices, and honorable to us as a people and nation.

In the midst of a beleaguered camp, with no notes of former reading, or books of reference, it is a poor place for the elaboration of one's ideas;—the writer, nevertheless, proposes to make a brief inquiry into the issues involved in this terrible war.

The fact exists that there is a war between the North and South, brought about, as we believe, by unwarranted and aggressive acts of the Slave Power. This slave oligarchy of the South either had, or affected to have, a profound contempt for what they supposed was the want of spirit in the Northern people. It was a current swagger that we should barely furnish them with an opportunity to show their superior military prowess. 'This war shall be waged on Northern soil,' they said. Events have shown that they miscalculated; but the raids of Jackson, Lee, Morgan & Co. show how great their will has been to carry out their threats of invasion. When the rebel guns opened upon Sumter, there was no alternative left us but fight now, or soon. Had we hesitated and compromised then, the arrogant spirit of the insurgents would have been still further flattered and puffed up, and their contempt for the submissive North made genuine, whatever it may have been before. A compromise then would have made no lasting peace; the South would soon have become tired of being merely 'let alone;' her exactions and aggressions would have become more and more insolent and intolerable, till warlike resistance or ignoble submission and slavery would have been our only alternative. This war is, therefore, on our part and in one sense, a war in self-defence; and this may be regarded as one of its issues.

Every loyal soldier is fighting for the security of our Northern homes; and the issue resolves itself into this: The resistance of invasion; the vindication of our manliness as a people; the protection of our own firesides—else be overrun, outraged, desolated, enslaved by the minions of a Southern oligarchy, which indulges the insane conceit that it is born to rule.

Unfortunately for our country, it embraces two distinct forms of society, of dissimilar, if not of antagonistic character. It is a heritage from our ancestors; but none the less an evil for its prestige from the sanctities of time; and we are now reaping its bitter fruits in the manifold and hideous forms of a great civil war. Taking human nature as it is, there appears to be no escape from this cruel ordeal. We of the North claim that we have transcended that type of society whose vital and informing element is chattel slavery. There is natural and irrepressible antagonism between the two forms of society; they cannot subsist in peace and good feeling by the side of each other, and still less under the same Government. Conflict was inevitable, and it came.

At this stage of the war and of elucidation respecting its cause and origin, this may be only commonplace, yet necessary to fulness of statement.