Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1887 — Gettysburg and the Franco-Prussian War. [ARTICLE]

Gettysburg and the Franco-Prussian War.

During the Franco-Prussian war I kept a map of the field 'of operations with colored peg 3, that were moved from day to day to indicate the movements of the two armies. Eazine had been driven to shelter at Metz. McMahon had been driven back to the route leading from Paris to Metz and seemed in doubt whether he would go to Paris or to Eazaine’s relief. He suffered himself to be forced north of the route between these points. On the morning that the wires brought us that information, two or three of the French creoles of New Orleans visited my office to inquire my views of the movements then proceeding. I replied, “McMahon’s army will of war in ten days. ” They wero very indignant and stated that I was a republican and in sympathy with the Prussians. My reply was that I had only given them my solution of a military problem. The Prussians were on the shorter route to Paris or to Metz, so that if McMahon should attempt to move in either direction the Prussians, availing themselves of the shorter lines, would interpose and force McMahon to attack, but he had already been so beaten and demoralized that he could not be expected to make a successful attack, and would therefore be obliged to surrender. If he had gone directly to Paris before giving up his shorter route, it is possible that he could have organizing a succoring army for the relief of Metz. Had we interposed between Meade and Washington our army, in almost as successful prestige as was that of the Prussians, Meade would have been obliged to atta :k us wherever we might be pleased to have him. He would have been badly beaten like the I rench, and the result would have been similar. I do not mean to say that two governments would have been permanently established; for I thought before the war, and during its continuance, that the peoples would eventually get together again in stronger bonds of friendship than those of their first love. — Gen. Longstreet, in the Century. Several cases of physical and mental-. wreck are reported as the result of using the new anaesthetic, cocaine, in excess. Confirmed insanity has been produced by less than two years’ indulgence, and the moral nature, as in the case of the opium habit, is very speedily undermined.