of Chickamauga" and "The Shades of the Wilderness" to the present volume.
It has been completed at the expense of vast labor, and the author has
striven at all times to be correct, wherever facts are involved. So far,
at least, no historic detail has been challenged by critic or reader.

More than half a century has passed since the Civil War's close. Not
many of the actors in it are left. It was one of the most tremendous
upheavals in the life of any nation, and it was the greatest of all
struggles, until the World War began, but scarcely any trace of partisan
rancor or bitterness is left. So, it has become easier to write of it
with a sense of fairness and detachment, and the lapse of time has made
the perspective clear and sharp.

However lacking he may be in other respects, the author perhaps had an
advantage in being born, and having grown up in a border state, where
sentiment was about equally divided concerning the Civil War. He was
surrounded during his early youth by men who fought on one side or the
other, and their stories of camp, march and battle were almost a part of
the air he breathed. So he hopes that this circumstance has aided him to
give a truthful color to the picture of the mighty combat, waged for four
such long and terrible years.




THE CIVIL WAR SERIES


VOLUMES IN THE CIVIL WAR SERIES