TO MY SON STANLEY WHO, WHEN A LITTLE LAD, WAS WONT TO DEMAND OF STORIES 'BOUT THE AUTHOR THE one hundred and thirty volumes of War Records, Union and Confederate, the publication of which, by the government, was recently completed, contain the inside facts connected with the four years of the Civil War, the most tremendous period in the history of our nation. Many of the letters and orders published were marked "Private and Confidential,” and were never before made public. These big books tell of ambitions realized; of plans which failed; of personal jealousies and disappointments; of suffering by men and women and little children; of manacles and chains; of death of blindfolded men in front of a file of soldiers; of executions on the scaffold; of bloody battles; of weary marches; of prison camps; of wrong, injustice, and sacrifice; of brutality which would disgrace a heathen people; of loyalty worthy of saints; of unjust criticism and querulous fault-finding; of loss of life and loss of fortune; of greed battening on a nation's stress; of generous proffer of all men and women held dear; of the hopefulness, the forbearance, the suffering, the broad charity, and the forgiving spirit of that noblest son of the greatest nation on earth-Abraham Lincoln. To glean from the 139,868 printed pages comprising this stupendous record some of the stories it contains of the intense life of that eventful period, and to render accessible to the general public historical facts which would be otherwise known to only the few, is the purpose of this book. JOHN T. BELL. |