FOREWORD F ORT SUMTER having played so conspicuous and fateful a part in that period of national fermentation termed the War of the Rebellion, which has resulted in a unified country of similar ideas and common purposes inspired with the Spirit of Progress, it seems only fitting and proper that the fiftieth anniversary of the day when the national flag was replaced upon the glorious ruins of that fortress, by order of President Lincoln and in the presence of many who had participated there in the birth of the War, be memorialized in the comparatively imperishable form of a book; and fitting too, it seems, that the hero of the day, General Robert Anderson, whose acts in those significant days of April four years before the restoration of the national banner and throughout the strife, and whose whole life, indeed, be brought more prominently forward into the consciousness and gratitude of our country and become an inspiration to her youth. This the warrant for this little volume: may it serve as one more record of unswerving loyalty and gallant achievement in the life of the American Nation. |