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THE

FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR.

BY

EDWARD A. POLLARD,

AUTHOR OF BLACK DIAMONDS,'' ETC.

CORRECTED AND IMPROVED EDITION.

RICHMOND:

WEST & JOHNSTON, 145 MAIN STREET.

1862.

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In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Confederate States for the Eastern District of Virginia.

CHAS. H. WYNNE, PRINTER.

37

PREFACE.

Ir is scarcely necessary to state that the following pages have been written without any thing like literary ambition. They have been composed by the author, with but little aid, within the short period of three months, and in the midst of exacting occupations in the editorial department of a daily

newspaper.

These explanations are not made to disarm criticism. Their purpose is only to define the claim which the author's work makes at the bar of public criticism. He does not pretend to have written a brilliant or elaborate book; but he does claim. to have composed, without seeking after literary ornaments, or taxing his style with intellectual refinements, a compact, faith ful, and independent popular narrative of the events of the first year of the existing war.

The author acknowledges some assistance from Mr. B. M. DEWITT, in the collection of materials. He has but little other of obligation to express, except to his publishers, Messrs. WEST & JOHNSTON, of Richmond, to whom he would make a public acknowledgment for their generous encouragement, liberality, and enterprising endeavors, which have enabled him, under many inauspicious circumstances, to complete his work.

Richmond, Virginia, July, 1862.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THE author, in presenting to the public a second edition of his work, has taken occasion to correct some errors, to make material annotations, and to add a supplementary chapter, tracing the progress and developments of the war from the concluding point of the first year of its history to the period of publication.

He desires to make his grateful acknowledgments for the favor with which his work has already been received by the public; for numerous kind notices of the newspaper press, and for words of encouragement spoken by many whom he is proud to call his friends. The success with which his work has so far met, being unprecedented, he believes, in the literary enterprises of the South, has surprised and gratified the author. He protests, however, that, under any circumstances, he has but little literary vanity to be inflated; that he composed his work in haste, with neither time nor purpose to polish his style, or to captivate the taste of readers, and that he is content to ascribe the success of his book to the fact that, though rudely written and imperfect in many particulars, it is, as he believes, honest, fair, independent, and outspoken.

While such has been the general character of the reception given his book by the public, the author is sensible that some attacks have been made upon it from malicious and disappointed sources, and that the honest record which he has attempted of the truth of history, has been encountered by many unjust, ignorant, and contemptible criticisms, emanating mainly from favorites of the government and literary slatterns in the Departments. The author has made no attempt to conciliate either these creatures or their masters; he is not in the habit of toadying to great men, and courting such public whores as "official" newspapers; he is under no obligations to any man living to flatter him, to tell lies, or to abate any thing from the honest convictions of his mind. He proposed to write an independent history of some of the events of the existing war. He is willing for his work to be judged by the strictest rule of truth; he asks no favors for it, in point of accuracy; he only protests against a rule of criticism, which exalts paid panegyric above honest truth, and reduces the level of the historian to that of the scrubs and scribblers who write poetry and puffs in newspaper corners.

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