University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

During the period to which these Memoirs relate, I kept
memoranda and made notes more or less complete of events with
which I was connected. I was also in most instances, at the time
and at my request, kindly furnished by my superiors in command
with copies of their official reports of battles and sieges in
which I bore a part. The papers of Hagood's Brigade were
preserved in the general wreck of Confederate military affairs.
Diaries kept of portions of the war by certain of my comrades
were also loaned me, and I had had preserved a complete file
of the Charleston Mercury from the reduction of Sumter by the
South Carolina forces in 1861 to the evacuation of Charleston in
1865, besides special numbers of other newspapers of that day.

From these materials, aided by my recollection, and corrected
sometimes by general histories of the war and such United States
congressional war documents as have been published up to this
date, the Memoirs have been compiled.

It will be seen that in their character they are chiefly personal
to myself and my immediate associates. My rank in the large
armies in which I served was not sufficiently elevated to give me
at all times a comprehensive survey of the military horizon while
the war was going on, and since then I have had neither the time
nor opportunity to qualify myself for a more general narrative.
It will be seen also that they are purely military. My tastes
and pursuits do not qualify me for entering into a discussion of
the conflict of political principles having its origin in the convention
which adopted the Federal Constitution itself and
culminating in the secession of the Southern States, and during
the war the Confederate Congress did its work on all important
occasions with closed doors; but partial statements of its action
reached the newspapers and it was difficult for one in the ranks
of the army to learn clearly the policy that governed its course.

It only remains to state the motives that induced me to prepare
these Memoirs and the object for which it is done. It is known
that at the close of the war the archives of the Confederate War
Department fell into the hands of the United States Government,

and that Lieber, a renegade Southron, was employed to
arrange them. Up to this time they have been sedulously kept
a sealed book to the public. In all human probability, under the
manipulation to which they have been and will be subjected,
when the future historians obtain access to them

Again, these records themselves were incomplete. The detailed
reports of the campaigns of 1864 and 1865 were never made.
Under these circumstances, I believe it is the duty of every Confederate
whose opportunities were such as to enable him to speak
now with anything like accuracy, to put on record what he knows.
He owes the duty not only to himself and his associates, but to
truth. It was hoped that General Lee would undertake to perpetuate
the record of his men. Just after the cessation of hostilities
reports of the campaigns of 1864 and 1865 were called
for through the regular gradations of rank among the survivors
of the Confederate army, with the avowed purpose of completing
his data for the work, and they were to some extent furnished.
Whatever his purpose may have been, his recent death precludes
that hope.

These Memoirs are not prepared for the printer, nor will they,
or any part of them, while I control them, be made public. I
bequeath them to my son that he may know what part his father
and his father's friends bore in the war; and with instructions
at any time to show them to those whose record they give, or to
their descendants. The time has not come, and may not come
for fifty years, when justice can be done to the losing party in a
bitter civil war. Should, then, this manuscript fall into the hands
of an historian who approaches his task with the intent "to
nothing extenuate, or aught set down in malice," he may use
the limited material it contains for what it is worth. He will
have the assurance of one, then long passed to his final account,
of its accuracy as far as his knowledge and belief extends.