A Few Acts and Actors in the Tragedy of the Civil War in the United States

A Few Acts and Actors in the Tragedy of the Civil War in the United States was written by William Bender Wilson (1839-1919) . Published in 1892 in Philadelphia.. From Review of Hardcover. William Bender Wilson was appointed manager of the telegraph office for the War Department in Washington. This unique position brought him into contact with many high-ranking members of the government. These essays touch on certain "acts and actors" of the Civil War, namely those that had some connection to him.. Dedication. TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN:. There are periods which come to all when the noise of the world's activities seems to cease for a moment to allow us the time to turn our thoughts inward for the purpose of reviewing life with its hopes, its failures, and its possibilities.Such reviews must necessarily place on the tablets of memory many pictures taken from the world's evermoving panorama, which by producing in words, or on canvas, may be profitable to our kind.One of these periods recently came to me, and the review covered in point of time five-sevenths of the allotted years of man, for when the bells in the birthday tower next chime for me I will have completed the cycle of a half of a century of life existence with its varied experiences and recollections.I have taken several pictures from memory's tablets as they came up in the review and now grouping them together under the title of "A Few Acts and Actors in the Tragedy of the Civil War in the United States," lovingly dedicate their publication to you.WILLIAM BENDER WILSON. EXCERPTS. THE dark, impenetrable clouds, so long gathering, enshrouding the fate of popular government, growing more threatening as they deepened, were on the 13th of April 1861, lightened up by the flashes from rebel guns in Charleston harbor, which at once dispelled all doubts as to the nature of the storm that was to sweep over the land. The effect was an instantaneous uprising of the people to defend the heritage of the fathers.From farm to hamlet, hamlet to town, and town to city, the embers of patriotism were fanned into a blaze. There is no period in this country's history which is marked with a purer, more unselfish patriotism than that embraced in the days intervening the 13th of April and the 1st of May 1861, and no spot that witnessed its fuller display than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.. THE battle of Bull Run and its attending disasters threw the country into a great turmoil of excitement. The loyal people were appalled when the startling fact broke upon them that they had vastly underrated the strength, power, and resources of the enemy. They saw that they were sadly disappointed in their supposition that the army of raw levies from the workshops, fields, counters, and offices of the North, accustomed only to the avocations of peace, would, in three short months, whip a military people, fighting under the stimulus of desperation. "Bull Run" was an error which a round of circumstances made the Government commit. The three months' enlistments were drawing to the end of the term; the troops not satisfied with the great work they had performed of saving the Capitol, desired a taste of war's bitter fruits in the frenzied fray; influences from civil life clamored for a battle, and everywhere throughout the land the cry of "On to Richmond" could be heard; capitalists who had loaned the Government their wealth, Senators and Representatives in Congress who had the voting of supplies, and the radical abolitionists with an impetuousness inborn of their detestation of slavery, demanded a demonstration against the enemy.