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The Conflict at Charleston!

The fratricidal blow has been struck! Civil war is upon us. The rebels have opened their batteries on Sumter, and the prospect of a long and bloody strife is before us. It has come as the consequence of causes so often and emphatically deprecated by democrats and other conservative men — as the consequence of sectional agitations by northern and southern extremists. But it is useless and unprofitable now to discuss the causes which have placed the country in its present unhappy condition. The government has been resisted in the performance of its legal functions. Rebels to the national authorities have fired upon the flag of the country, and assaulted one of its garrisons when effort was being made to reinforce and provision the noble Anderson and his gallant little band. Most gallantly have they resisted. Bravely have they defended their country's flag and their country's rights, but we fear, from the news that has reached us, that they have been overborne by the superior force of the rebels surrounding them.

Our despatches from Charleston are most contradictory in their character, and are doubtless tinged with exaggeration of advantages gained by the rebels from time to time. The sources of information are under rebel control, and of course such a coloring is given to dispatches sent as to give the most formidable complexion to their strength and their achievements. Still, we believe, from a sifting of the intelligence received that ere this, the gallant Anderson and his slender command have been forced to capitulate.

The news has been productive of the most intense feeling and excitement here, as it will be throughout the land, but whatever may be men's opinions as to the causes which have brought war upon us, there is but one feeling, and that is in behalf of the national government and the flag of the Union. This is as it should be. With the true patriot, whatever may be his opinions of the causes of war with his country's enemies, he is for his country and his country's flag, and his hearty support, morally, and physically if necessary, should be rendered to the country's cause.

The future presents a gloomy prospect. With a foreign enemy a war is dreadful to contemplate, but when the strife is with our own blood, when countrymen, kindred, despite the ties of nationality, of consanguinity, of the common glories of the past and the boundless prospects, with union and amity, of a prosperous and glorious future, the thought is a sickening, a terrible one that such things are, — God, in his infinite wisdom, only knowing when the horrors incident to such a strife can cease. But civil war is our present condition, and the patriot can only sympathize with his government and with the flag beneath the folds of which we have achieved our national eminence, with which are associated so many glorious memories, and with which are blended all our hopes of future greatness, happiness and prosperity, of civil and religious liberty and the cause of democratic republican government.

Under our telegraphic head we give all the news we have received up to Sunday morning. Doubtless there is much of the "sensational" in it.

— After the foregoing was put in type dispatches were received announcing the surrender of Fort Sumter.