recollections
gathered during its most trying scenes, these papers are now revised,
condensed and formulated for the first time. In years past, some of
their crude predecessors have appeared--as random articles--in the
columns of the Mobile _Sunday Times_, Appleton's _Journal_, the
Louisville _Courier-Journal_, the Philadelphia _Times_ and other
publications.

Even in their present condensation and revision, they claim only to be
simple memoranda of the result of great events; and of their reaction
upon the mental and moral tone of the southern people, rather than a
record of those events themselves.

This volume aspires neither to the height of history, nor to the depths
of political analysis; for it may still be too early for either, or for
both, of these. Equally has it resisted temptation to touch on many
topics--not strictly belonging inside the Southern Capitals--still
vexed by political agitation, or personal interest. These, if unsettled
by dire arbitrament of the sword, must be left to Time and his best
coadjutor, "sober second-thought."

Campaigns and battles have already surfeited most readers; and their
details--usually so incorrectly stated by the inexpert--have little to
do with a relation of things within the Confederacy, as they then
appeared to the masses of her people. Such, therefore, are simply
touched upon in outline, where necessary to show their reaction upon
the popular pulse, or to correct some flagrant error regarding that.

To the vast majority of those without her boundaries--to very many,
indeed, within them--realities of the South, during the war, were a
sealed book. False impressions, on many important points, were
disseminated; and these, because unnoted, have grown to proportions of
accepted truth. A few of them, it may not yet be too late to correct.

While the pages that follow fail not to record some weaknesses in our
people, or some flagrant errors of their leaders, they yet endeavor to
chronicle faithfully heroic constancy of men, and selfless devotion of
women, whose peers the student of History may challenge that vaunting
Muse to show.

To prejudiced provincialism, on the one side, they may appear too
lukewarm; by stupid fanaticism on the other, they may be called
treasonable. But--written without prejudice, and equally without fear,
or favor--they have aimed only at impartial truth, and at nearest
possible correctness of narration.

Indubitably the war proved that there