Major Anderson, who commanded the garrison, had many ties and
associations that bound him to the South. He performed his part like the
true soldier and man of the finest sense of honor that he was; but that
it was most painful to him to be charged with the duty of holding the
fort as a threat to the people of Charleston is a fact known to many
others as well as to myself. We had been cadets together. He was my
first acquaintance in that corps, and the friendship then formed was
never interrupted. We had served together in the summer and autumn of
1860, in a commission of inquiry into the discipline, course of studies,
and general condition of the United States Military Academy. At the
close of our labors the commission had adjourned, to meet again in
Washington about the end of the ensuing November, to examine the report
and revise it for transmission to Congress. Major Anderson's duties in
Charleston Harbor hindered him from attending this adjourned meeting of
the commission, and he wrote to me, its chairman, to explain the cause
of his absence. That letter was lost when my library and private papers
were "captured" from my home in Mississippi. If any one has preserved it
as a trophy of war, its publication would show how bright was the honor,
how broad the patriotism of Major Anderson, and how fully he sympathized
with me as to the evils which then lowered over the country.
In comparing the past and the present among the mighty changes which
passion and sectional hostility have wrought, one is profoundly and
painfully impressed by the extent to which public opinion has drifted
from the landmarks set up by the sages and patriots who formed the
constitutional Union, and observed by those who administered its
government down to the time when war between the States was inaugurated.
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