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HISTORY

OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.

BY

JAMES SCHOULER.

VOL. VI. 1861-1865.

NEW YORK:

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY,

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1899,

BY JAMES SCHOULER.

All rights reserved.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS.
PRESSWORK BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

E301
5372
V.6

UNDERGRAD.
LIBRARY

MAIN

FAVORED by health and opportunity, the author, after an interval of eight years, completes his History of the United States under the Constitution by issuing a sixth volume to cover the period of the Civil War and President Lincoln's memorable administration.

During the active composition of this volume, a labor which would not have been undertaken but for the zealous prompting of others, I have formed the impression that, with all that has been written, and well written, touching America's gigantic conflict, a narrative within the present compass, viewing events in the calm perspective, developing the story on its civil as well as its military side, and making just use of those copious historical materials which have accumulated during the last thirty years, remained a desideratum. Whether the present work, projected as the companion of former volumes in a consecutive tale, may in a measure supply such a need, the reading public, always indulgent to my efforts, must determine. Among the serviceable works I have consulted and cited, these deserve especial mention: the printed War Records, Union and Confederate, the munificent gift of our government to historical investigators; the Life of Abraham Lincoln by his private secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, whose ten large volumes are an ample treasure-house of authentic information, illumined by personal acquaintance; Moore's Rebellion Record, an immense work, compiled as the war went on; the American Annual Cyclopædia, 1861-65; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,' voluminous with its mili

1 Cited "W. R."

2 Cited "N. & H."

3 Cited "Moore."
4 Cited B. & L."

tary and naval descriptions by surviving participators, North and South; biographies, prepared from the private papers of great civilians, like Seward,' Chase, Stanton, and Sumner on the one side, and Stephens and Toombs on the other; likewise the authorized Memoirs of Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Sheridan, Lee, the Johnstons, Jackson, Longstreet, and other famous commanders. The Confederate histories of Jefferson Davis, Stephens, Pollard, and De Leon have been duly explored. From magazines and newspapers, contemporaneous with the war, much pictorial matter has been gathered, as also from the descriptions supplied by Carpenter, Chittenden, Noah Brooks, Ida M. Tarbell, and others. Nor have I been disinclined to reproduce some of my own vivid impressions of the period, formed in early manhood, not without some special opportunities for observing. In apportioning space for this narrative, I have subordinated battle details still in controversy, and the arithmetic of slaughter, for the sake of bringing out clearly the drift and purpose of successive campaigns and the traits of different commanders, and so as to present, moreover, some general features of the warfare worth dwelling upon. I have sought besides to present the political and social progress of this grave epoch, and the variations of our public opinion, in the course of what, after all, ought to be deemed the bloody culmination of a long political feud of sections. And while, throughout, I have striven to do full justice to honest and patriotic motives, North and South, and to that noble spirit of heroic devotion and self-sacrifice which animated the common people of both sections, Americans all, and brethren, I have not suppressed my personal convictions as to the real merits of this sanguinary strife, nor amiably shifted the ground of discussion. For, as it seems to me, if our grand experiment of popular government is to grandly endure, the real reconciliation of sec

1 That prepared by his son and assistant Secretary, Frederick W. Seward, is cited "Seward."

2 The author acknowledges special favors received from Stanton's biographer, Hon. George C. Gorham, and from Mr. Frederic Bancroft. 8 Citations" Davis" refer to that writer's Short History.

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tions will come finally in the common recognition, as a lesson for all future time, that between the social and industrial systems of equal opportunity and of race subjection, each ambitious of expansion in a confederated Republic like ours, there is a fatal antagonism.

I have now reached the ultimate goal proposed in these historical labors. I have told my tale; I have finished my task; and the story of reconstruction and of a broader national existence I willingly leave to other pens. Whatever may have been my imperfections as a narrator of events, and no one, I am sure, whose aims are high, can be unconscious of his own shortcomings, I trust it may

be said of me that I have written with a constant purpose to be just and truthful.

BOSTON, October 3, 1899.

JAMES SCHOULER.

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