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sponsible for this interpolation, I repudiated it as soon as it came to my knowledge, upon which the Messrs. Appleton promised that in future editions of the Cyclopædia my name as the author of the article should be omitted. I have therefore since then regarded the matter as finally closed, and here make mention of it only for the imperative reason assigned.

Lest a doubt may arise in the minds of some persons as to whether recollections which revert to seven years of age are trustworthy, it should be remarked that that depends upon idiosyncrasy. Records show that, in certain cases, accurate memory of events of a simple order has reached three or four years anterior to the period mentioned. I know a person who, when a boy of five years of age, was carried one night to a window, whence he was shown the aurora-borealis, which, in after years, he declared, amid the jeers of his companions, to have been pink. He grew up, however, to learn from scientific statistics that his perception had not been at fault, for the aurora of the date corresponding with his age at that time is noted as pink. I shall not therefore shrink, when I could add to this mention of the early recollections of John Stuart Mill and others, from speaking with confidence of things which first appeared upon my mental horizon at seven years of age.

I was, for two years of the war, through surveying for defensive works, and engagement in some cognate matters, associated with military operations; have been intimately connected in and outside of my family with men of both branches of the military service; and have also been some

what of a student all my life of military affairs. These experiences constitute in sum the modest claim that I make to be able to speak with some authority in a memoir which is necessarily military.

As some readers may, I know, ask themselves why, although General Meade was not present at the first battle of Bull Run, an account of it is introduced in this work (for the question has already been propounded by a person who knew of what the manuscript consisted), I may be permitted here to anticipate any similar enquiry. Regarding completeness in this case from an historic point of view, one must, to secure it, put oneself in the position of the general reader, of individuals of new adult generations, and of the present generation of youth, to perceive with these how imperfect would be their grasp of the sequence of events concerned, if an account of the first battle of Bull Run were omitted from a history of the great conflict of the Civil War. The War in the East of the United States may be truly regarded as one great drama, to which the simultaneous action in the West stands in a more or less subsidiary relation. To omit the first great scene of its campaigns, whether or not it should be regarded as an episode of a part, or of the whole, of the gigantic struggle, because, with one exception, the principal actor in them had not up to that time appeared upon the boards, would be a violation of dramatic proprieties. The omission of the first great battle of any war would be a serious blemish in an account of it, and in this case peculiarly so, for the result of the first battle of Bull Run which, in the day of its occur

rence, was naturally looked upon as an unmitigated disaster, ought now clearly to be recognized as having been a blessing in disguise. The preliminary movements and the battle itself conclusively proved for the first time to the North the determination and momentarily military superiority of the South. Had victory in that first contest been with the North, it could but have had the evil effect of increasing a confidence there which needed dissipating by comprehension of the fact that the South was in deadly earnest, backed by military ability and perfect faith in success, and that the struggle upon which it had entered with the North was intended to be à outrance. The result of the battle did, as nothing else could have accomplished it, arouse to that knowledge, although with lingering inappreciation of the degree of force needed to meet the emergency; and this it was that first braced the intention of the North adequately, if still imperfectly as to means devised, to meet with equal determination the danger with which the life of the nation was menaced. Lastly, I may say, there is a subsidiary, but important reason why an account of the first battle of Bull Run should be here presented, as related not less to the whole war than to its vicissitudes in the East. It is because this account puts the responsibility for the loss of the battle where it belongs, where justice proclaims that it shall be placed, and not where it is, even at this late day, popularly laid.

even

No one, as a contemporary, can hope to write for contemporaries the history of even a single operation of any contemporaneous war without running counter to both

prejudices and well-grounded opinions as to many points. I therefore do not expect to escape the fate of any one who has attempted or ever shall attempt a task similar to mine. All that any honest historian has, under such circumstances, the right to deprecate, in the interest of arrival at truth, is uninstructed commentary, or else imputation of ulterior motives in his work. So far as his personal interest is concerned, however, he can afford to bear the latter slight temporary infliction, in the light of knowledge of the prevalence of the practice of Dodson and Fogg, when there is no case, to abuse the plaintiff; but the other interest is eternal. The address made in the following pages is to minds capable of sitting in judgment on a reopened case, or rather upon one which has never been really tried, and back of that appeal, in the interests of justice, lies another, to the final decision in the affairs of men, constituted by the verdict, be it of few or many individuals, of the supreme court of posterity. That an author should be deemed sometimes mistaken is easy for him to bear, in the universal recognition that it is human to err, especially as he can take to his own soul the same flattering unction with reference to difference of opinion between his readers and himself. This condition is but in the nature of things, and places all differences of opinion and sentiment on an equal footing of fairness. I hope, with the aid of advocates, and of adversaries as well, whose agency, if taken aright, is not generally appreciated, eventually to be able to divest this volume of minor errors, which not even the most painstaking care in any work has ever been able entirely to avoid and finally to leave it, as nearly

letter-perfect as may be, as a legacy to the cause of historical truth.

While no one but myself is responsible for any of the opinions expressed in the course of this work, I am much pleased to learn from my friend, Judge Craig Biddle, of Philadelphia, that the portion of the chapter on Bull Run relating to General Patterson, of which he made critical examination, is correct in its statement of the difficulties under which General Patterson labored; and as Judge Biddle was a member of his staff at the time, his opinion in the matter ought to have great weight. Another chapter, that entitled, "The Change of Base and Attempted Surprise of Petersburg," has been examined by my friend, John C. Ropes, Esq., of Boston, who, omitting verification of minute details (to do which I would not have had him take the trouble, being very sure of them myself), writes me that my account of the affair is, from his standpoint, strictly accurate.

The necessity of modifying excellent battle-maps of the Government by the sketches herewith presented arose from the circumstance that they, being on a much larger scale than the sketches, and additionally, represented in colors, a photographic reduction of the untouched originals would, through diminution in size and photographic color-limitations, have rendered many of their conventional signs imperceptible. Moreover, as elevation of ground in many of the aforesaid maps is represented solely by what are called contour lines (horizontal lines representing equal differences of elevation), and the effect as thus given is unintelligible to

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