PREFACE.

FROM the commencement of our Government there have been two antagonistic principles contending for the mastery-Slavery and Freedom. In the very heart of our democracy, the element of the most haughty and intolerant aristocracy has been nurtured, by the institution of human bondage. The most repulsive features of the old European feudalism have thus been transplanted into our Republic. The slaveholders, accustomed to despotic power over the wretched serfs, whom they have driven, by the lash, to till their soil, have assumed a sort of baronial arrogance over all men who do not own slaves, and have claimed to be the only gentlemen, and the legitimate rulers of this land. But freedom has outstripped slavery in this race. And, consequently, the slaveholders, unreconciled to the loss of supremacy, strive to destroy the temple of liberty, wishing to raise themselves into lords and potentates, over the ruin of their country.

The conflict in which our nation is now involved, is simply a desperate struggle, on the part of the slaveholders, to retain, by force of arms, that domination in the government of this Republic, which they had so long held, and which, by the natural operation of the ballot-box, they were slowly but surely losing. We have here, simply the repetition of that great conflict, which, for ages, has agitated our globe-the conflict between aristocratic usurpation and popular rights. The battle has assumed the most momentous attitude, since it arrays, on either side, all the intellectual and material energies developed by the nineteenth century.

It is impossible for one to write the history of this strife and not incur the censure of one or the other of these parties, so implacably arrayed against each other. There are many in the North, who are in cordial sympathy with the slaveholding aristocracy, and who would gladly see.

their principles triumphant over this whole land. All such will denounce. these pages. The writer is by no means an indifferent spectator of this conflict. The fundamental article in his political, philanthropic and religious creed is the brotherhood of man. The disposition on the part of the rich to trample upon the poor, and of the strong to crush the weak, is alike execrable in its origin and in all its manifestations. This slaveholding rebellion against the rights of humanity, is the greatest crime of earth. In recording its events, candor does not demand that one should so ingeniously construct his narrative, as to make no distinction between virtue and vice. The impartiality of history does not require that the treason of Arnold and the patriotism of Washington, should be alike recorded, without commendation or censure.

The writer has, however, endeavored, as a historian, to maintain the most scrupulous honesty. Not a sentence would he willingly allow to escape his pen, distorted by untruthfulness or exaggeration. He has a story to tell of infamous crime, and of noble virtues. He wishes to tell it so truthfully, with such candor, with such expressions of abhorrence of foul treason, and such commendations of patriotic self-sacrifice, as will afford him pleasure to reflect upon, not merely through his brief remaining earthly career, but through all the ages of his immortality. He has never allowed himself to consider the question whether a particular statement would please or displease this or that party. His only object has been faithfully to pen such historic truth as is worthy of record.

The slaveholding rebels demanded that the Constitution of the United States, with its respect for the inalienable rights of man, should be repudiated, and that a new Constitution, with slavery as its corner stone, should be adopted in its stead. The South, overawed by a reign of terror, has seemingly gone as one man, in this demand. There are two parties at the North. The one party is in favor of yielding to this demand. They say that thus the war might have been averted, and may now be ended; that the South may thus be brought back, and the Union cemented anew. The other party say that we should be false to God and man, thus to sacrifice the rights of humanity; and that the vengeance of Heaven will justly fall upon us if we, at the dictation of slaveholders, convert our free Republic into the great bulwark of slavery. If free Americans prove recreant, in this hour of trial, and for the sake of a

hollow and transient peace, bow their necks to the yoke of aristocratic intolerance, and enthrone despotism in our land, there is an end, for ages to come, of all hope of free institutions.

There are some who say that war is the greatest of calamities, and that we had, therefore, better let the slaveholders have their own way, either to take the control of the government, or to secede, and to establish such boundaries as they may please. This is the dotage of amiability. There is not an intelligent man, North or South, who does not know that separation is eternal war. Who shall fix the boundaries? Who shall have Washington? Who shall have Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and the mouths of the Mississippi? Shall we say to the slaveholders, that they may take what they please? We must say this, or we must fight.

And suppose a division were made,. to which each party, exhausted by the war, would, for the moment, reluctantly consent. How is it possible that two hostile nations, with institutions inveterately antagonistic, should live in peace, side by side, with no natural barriers or boundaries-touching each other along a line of more than three thousand miles, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There are vast navigable rivers, rising in the one domain, and opening into the ocean through the other. On the one side there is freedom, with all its ennobling institutions sustained by free speech, a free pulpit and a free press-with universal education, and labor honored, and equality of rights for rich and poor. On the other side there is slavery, with its debasing associate institutions of compulsory ignorance, and slave marts, and overseers' lashes, with wide-spread ignorance the pulpit, the press and speech, all being gagged by the most unrelenting despotism. Slaves are escaping from the one realm pursued by their masters with shotted guns and bloodhounds. In the other they are received with Christian sympathy. Their wounds are washed, their fetters filed off, and their famished bodies fed, while baying bloodhounds and human monsters still more ferocious, are driven back to their own dark realm, gnashing their teeth with rage as they cry out, "You are stealing our property." Is it possible that two such nations can live in peace, without even a hill or rivulet to separate them? There is not an intelligent man in America who dreams of it.

The ringleaders of the rebellion never entertained the idea, for a single

moment, that secession was thus to leave two equal nations, side by side. Secession was merely the mode through which the whole of the United States, with perhaps the exception of New England, was to be transformed from a free republic into a great slaveholding oligarchy. New England was to be left out, a power so feeble, that it could be chastised whenever the slaveholders deemed that it merited chastisement. There are but two alternatives before us. Peaceful separation is a dream, which an amiable girl may cherish, but which no intelligent man, North or South, deems to be a permanent possibility. Either slavery must be the dominant power on this Continent or freedom. The rebels having failed to carry their point at the ballot-box, have appealed to the sword.

A more delicate task than the writing of this History can not well be imagined. Nearly all the prominent actors are still living. Jealousy, and probably, in many cases, impartial judgment will declare, that too great merit has been ascribed to some, while not sufficient eminence has been given to others. The most scrupulous conscientiousness will not protect from such errors.

In reference to the descriptions of battles, the course of the writer has been to omit those minute and complicated details, which even the pen of a Thiers or a Napier can not make interesting to the general reader, and to give the comprehensive plan which every intelligent man can understand. A man need not be an architect, to entitle him to condemn the bungling plan of a building. One may pronounce a speech as stupid and silly, though himself not an orator. One need not be a graduate of West Point, to enable him to discern military incompetenc and folly. Military men must not take refuge behind the shield, that their actions are not amenable to the criticism of ordinary intelligence. Military science is by no means that occult art which civilians can not approach; on the contrary, it is preeminently the science of common sense. An intelligent community will pronounce judgment, and, in the main, a correct judgment, upon the alty or the incompetency of its generals. Not for one moment is the sentiment to be tolerated, that if a boy spends four years at a military school, he attains such an elevation, that the most cultivated and intelligent men in the land, are incapable of deciding whether he is a wise man or a fool.

In studying the plan and the execution of a battle, the writer has

first carefully examined the official reports of the Union generals, and of the rebel officers. Having thus obtained the general outline, he has then looked, for the filling up of interesting incidents and heroic achievements, to the graphic descriptions of army correspondents. And here he must render his tribute of commendation and gratitude to the reporters of the leading journals. He is constrained to say, that not unfrequently the newspaper report has been more correct, more truthful, than the official bulletin. A man may be a good general, and yet may give a confused report of the conflict. The talent for vivid description is rare, combining as it necessarily does, great command of language, and that inborn delicacy and sensitiveness of soul, which enables one to select the salient points of the action, and to omit the rest. The English language may be searched in vain for more glowing descriptions, for more gorgeous word painting, than may be found from the pens of some of the reporters to the leading journals of our country.

The Hon. Edward Everett once inquired of the Duke of Wellington, respecting the battle of Waterloo. The Duke, with that singular good sense, which ever characterized him, replied, "By comparing and study-” ing the various descriptions of the battle, by English, French and German writers, a man of sense can acquire a better knowledge of it, at the present day, than any one, even the commander-in-chief, could get, at the time, from personal observation.'

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The fact that a man was present at a battle does not imply necessarily that he knows much about it. The battle may rage over many square miles. The individual combatant is perhaps confined to a very limited. space, buried in smoke, and all the energies of his soul so concentrated upon the claims of each moment, that he has no opportunity for observation. Many of the battles of this rebellion, spread through forests and ravines, and over hills, leagues in extent. The battle often continued several days, the army surging to and fro. The description of the scene, in these pages, will be read by thousands who took part in the strife, and who, perhaps, attach exaggerated importance to their own agency, or to the operations in that particular part of the field on which they stood. Consequently, the narrative must be exposed to the most severe, and often to the most unjust, ordeal of criticism.

It is always pleasant to meet with approval, and always painful to