ently show, without warrant of law or justice, to inaugurate and wage against the South one of the most cruel, wicked and relentless wars of which history furnishes any record or parallel. Is there wonder, then, that the representatives of the Grand Army of the Republic would have us be silent about the facts which we have referred to, and not teach the truths of this history to our children, when we thus condemn them out of their own mouths?
But we come now to consider, who were the aggressors who inaugurated this wicked war?
We think it important to make this inquiry, for the reasons already given, and because we apprehend there is a common impression that inasmuch as the South fired the first gun at Fort Sumter, it really thereby brought on the war, and was hence responsible for the direful consequences which followed the firing of that first shot. Nothing could he further from the truth. Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, states a universally recognized principle, when he says:
"The aggressor in a war (that is, he who begins it) is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary."
Now which side, according to this high authority, was the aggressor in this conflict? Which side was it that rendered the first blow necessary?
WHAT MR. STEPHENS SAYS.
Says Mr. Stephens, in his "War Between the States": "I maintain that it (the war) was inaugurated and begun, though no blow had been struck, when the hostile fleet, styled the "Relief Squadron," with eleven ships carrying two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred men, was sent out from New York and Norfolk, with orders from the authorities at Washington to reinforce Fort Sumter, peaceably if permitted, but forcibly if they must.
He further says:
"The war was then and there inaugurated and begun by the authorities at Washington. General Beauregard did not open fire upon Fort Sumter until this fleet was to his knowledge, very near
