University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTORY.

A book which needs apologies ought never to
have been written. This is a canon of criticism so
universally accepted, that authors have abstained of
late days from attempting to disarm hostility by confessions
of weakness, and are almost afraid to say a
prefatory word to the gentle reader.

It is not to plead in mitigation of punishment or
make an appeal ad misericordiam, I break through
the ordinary practice, but by way of introduction
and explanation to those who may read these volumes,
I may remark that they consist for the most
part of extracts from the diaries and note-books
which I assiduously kept whilst I was in the
United States, as records of the events and impressions
of the hour. I have been obliged to omit
many passages which might cause pain or injury
to individuals still living in the midst of a civil
war, but the spirit of the original is preserved as
far as possible, and I would entreat my readers to
attribute the frequent use of the personal pronoun

and personal references to the nature of the sources
from which the work is derived, rather than to the
vanity of the author.

Had the pages been literally transcribed, without
omitting a word, the fate of one whose task it was
to sift the true from the false and to avoid error
in statements of fact, in a country remarkable for
the extraordinary fertility with which the unreal is
produced, would have excited some commiseration;
but though there is much extenuated in these
pages, there is not, I believe, aught set down in
malice. My aim has been to retain so much relating
to events passing under my eyes, or to
persons who have become famous in this great
struggle, as may prove interesting at present, though
they did not at the time always appear in their
just proportions of littleness or magnitude.

During my sojourn in the States, many stars of
the first order have risen out of space or fallen into
the outer darkness. The watching, trustful, millions
have hailed with delight or witnessed with terror
the advent of a shining planet or a splendid comet,
which a little observation has resolved into watery
nebulæ. In the Southern hemisphere, Bragg and
Beauregard have given place to Lee and Jackson.
In the North, McDowell has faded away before

McClellan, who having been put for a short season
in eclipse by Pope, only to culminate with increased
effulgence, has finally paled away before
Burnside. The heroes of yesterday are the martyrs
or outcasts of to-day, and no American general
needs a slave behind him in the triumphal chariot
to remind him that he is a mortal. Had I foreseen
such rapid whirls in the wheel of fortune I might
have taken more note of the men who were below,
but my business was not to speculate but to
describe.

The day I landed at Norfolk, a tall lean man,
ill-dressed, in a slouching hat and wrinkled clothes,
stood, with his arms folded and legs wide apart,
against the wall of the hotel looking on the ground.
One of the waiters told me it was "Professor
Jackson," and I have been plagued by suspicions
that in refusing an introduction which was offered
to me, I missed an opportunity of making the acquaintance
of the man of the stonewalls of Winchester.
But, on the whole, I have been fortunate
in meeting many of the soldiers and statesmen who
have distinguished themselves in this unhappy war.

Although I have never for one moment seen reason
to change the opinion I expressed in the first
letter I wrote from the States, that the Union as

it was could never be restored, I am satisfied the
Free States of the North will retain and gain great
advantages by the struggle, if they will only set
themselves at work to accomplish their destiny, nor
lose their time in sighing over vanished empire
or indulging in abortive dreams of conquest and
schemes of vengeance; but my readers need not
expect from me any dissertations on the present or
future of the great republics, which have been so
loosely united by the Federal band, nor any description
of the political system, social life, manners
or customs of the people, beyond those which may
be incidentally gathered from these pages.

It has been my fate to see Americans under
their most unfavorable aspect; with all their national
feelings, as well as the vices of our common
humanity, exaggerated and developed by the terrible
agonies of a civil war, and the throes of political
revolution. Instead of the hum of industry,
I heard the noise of cannon through the land. Society
convulsed by cruel passions and apprehensions,
and shattered by violence, presented its broken angles
to the stranger, and I can readily conceive
that the America I saw, was no more like the
country of which her people boast so loudly, than
the St. Lawrence when the ice breaks up, hurrying

onwards the rugged drift and its snowy crust of
crags, with hoarse roar, and crashing with irresistible
force and fury to the sea, resembles the calm
flow of the stately river on a summer's day.

The swarming communities and happy homes of
the New England States—the most complete exhibition
of the best results of the American system
—it was denied me to witness; but if I was deprived
of the gratification of worshipping the frigid
intellectualism of Boston, I saw the effects in the
field, among the men I met, of the teachings and
theories of the political, moral, and religious professors,
who are the chiefs of that universal Yankee
nation, as they delight to call themselves, and there
recognized the radical differences which must sever
them forever from a true union with the Southern
States.

The contest, of which no man can predict the
end or result, still rages, but notwithstanding the
darkness and clouds which rest upon the scene, I
place so much reliance on the innate good qualities
of the great nations which are settled on the Continent
of North America, as to believe they will be
all the better for the sweet uses of adversity; learning
to live in peace with their neighbors, adapting
their institutions to their necessities, and working

out, not in their old arrogance and insolence—
mistaking material prosperity for good government
—but in fear and trembling, the experiment on
which they have cast so much discredit, and the
glorious career which misfortune and folly can
arrest but for a time.