EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

THE war between the States gave rise to an enormous literature which is each year increasing in bulk. The majority of the items of this vast accumulation of historical contribution is absolutely partisan, and of the rest we do not find half a dozen that are unbiased and at the same time virile. Neutrality seems attainable by emasculation alone. Reflection will show the cause for this state of affairs; reason will demonstrate that when sentiment causes and maintains a conflict, no relation of the struggle that does not reflect the sentiment is a faithful presentation of the consequent war. Historians have found it easy to reflect one side or the other, but not to give both. Believing that the reason for this was sound, THE HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA did not seek to present in one volume the views of the North and the South. The editor held it important that the story of the North should be told by a man of the North, while that of the South should be related by a native of that section, and that both sides should be presented by men identified with the great internecine strife.

The editor was confirmed in this opinion by the fact that of all the general histories not one so presented the narrative of the Civil War, and it seemed most fitting that in this, the first history of North America, the initiative should be taken in recording the opposing views of sections whose. struggle made the years from 1860 to 1865 the most vital in the history of the United States.

After consultation with certain of the surviving leaders of the Lost Cause, notably General Stephen D. Lee and General John B. Gordon, the work of preparing the volume giving the Southern side of the history of the Civil War was assigned to the distinguished scholar, William Robertson Garrett, of Nashville, whose work in the field of Confederate history, and notably his contributions to the military history of the Civil War, had given him a prominent place among Southern historians. Dr. Garrett had completed the text of almost half of the volume and had made copious notes for the remainder when he died suddenly of angina pectoris in the city of his residence. He had so far anticipated the fatal result of his physical weakness, which continually interrupted his labors, that some two weeks before his death he wrote to the general editor of THE HISTORY of North AMERICA naming as his literary executor Dr. Halley, in whose knowledge and ability, as well as Southern sympathies, Dr. Garrett had perfect confidence.

The history of the Civil War from the Southern standpoint is, then, the work of two men, both thoroughly qualified for their task. The late Dr. Garrett was essentially of the old school, that to which Jefferson Davis belonged; Dr. Halley is, while in direct touch and hearty accord with the South of ante-bellum days, nevertheless a representative of what the late Henry Grady called the New South. No happier combination of authorship could have been made, for while the present volume is essentially Southern, while it is true to the traditions of the past, it is keenly alive to the necessities of the present and to the interests of the future.

This volume will come as a surprise to those who look for a bitter and biased work. It will also be a disappointment to those who expect to find in it the petty scandal that is always the aftermath of struggle-be that struggle political, military, or other. On the contrary, the present work is a calm and dispassionate presentation of the war as seen by men of judicial mind. This presentation has, naturally, two sides. One of these is the philosophy of the

history of the Civil War. It is concerned with causes and conclusions. The author analyzes the movement of events by which the conflict became inevitable. He sets forth the reasons by which the South considered itself justified in seceding and by which its independent government made its appeal not only to the people of the Southern States but to the world at large. His conclusions, based upon these causes, are well set forth. And his expression of the philosophy of the war is distinctly representative of the opinion of those Southerners who to-day hold in their hands the destinies of their section-not only as such, but as an integral part of the United States.

The volume is, however, essentially a military history. As such it must stand or fall. To the editor it justifies its right to be, not only by its differences with histories written by men of the North, but by the fact that it is a clear and accurate statement of the war from the viewpoint of a Southerner whose eyes are not blinded to Northern prowess and achievement. Messrs. Garrett and Halley are not only just, but generous. They bring forward their side of the story of the conflict, but never seek glory for the Confederate cause where that glory is not its by right. They have, in fact, demonstrated the truth of that claim so long made by the people of the South that a history of the Civil War could be written in which justice might be done to the North without traducing the South.

Johns Hopkins University.

GUY CARLETON LEE.

AUTHORS' PREFACE

WHEN men and nations have differed on great questions and have in any accepted mode of arbitrament pursued that difference to a logical conclusion, it is not for the victor in the contest to write the story of the defeated, or to pass upon the views and motives that controlled their action. With particular force does this apply to the civil war in America of 1861-1865. Had the North and the South regarded in anything like a similar light the long chain of events that preceded and led up to the war between the States, the war would never have been fought. Radical differences had grown up between the sections, and from the Northern point of view the circumstances and surroundings influencing the South were not clearly seen—or, if seen, were ignored. Either being true, how can the Northern writer tell the story impartially? History must have the truth. set down.

Generations of teaching by the fathers of the government, who had formed and administered the supreme law, had imbued the people of the South with firmly fixed views that were not to be shaken by newly grown theories of a section which by intrinsic changes had become hostile to much of what had been taught by the framers of the original constitution of the United States. The leaders of the Southern people represented the strength of the beliefs handed down by the fathers of the government, and they could not see