The Summer of 1864

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1864

The Summer of 1864.

The New York Commercial Advertiser has the following in reference to our hot, dry summer: The summer of 1848 was known in Europe as the "Battle Summer." Many conflicts then took place, indeed, all over Europe, and among them the ferocious struggle of society itself for life, in the streets of Paris, which will forever blaze in history as the "Days of June." The summer of 1848 was also one of the most intolerably oppressive summers in respect of heat which the century has known.

The summer of 1864 has been a "Battle Summer" in America. In no year of the war have so many and such sanguinary conflicts taken place during the summer months as in this; and the summer of 1864 is also destined to be remembered for the burning fervor of its atmosphere. Whether there be any subtle connection between gunpowder and human passions on the one hand, and the aspirations of the thermometer on the other, we cannot pretend to say.

It is certain that since the year 1834, no summer of such intense and continous heat has been known in the Eastern States of the Union. The "spears of the far-darting Apollo" is scarcely a metaphorical phrase to describe the effect of the sun's rays, striking steadily down upon the earth through long days and weeks of drought, parching the earth and smiting man and beast with disease, exhaustion and death. The heat has been like the heat of Syria, and it sunbeams like swords.

From the 10th of June to the 16th of August the average temperature of the North Atlantic States has been greater than the mean temperature for the same period at Cairo.—Detroit Tribune.