YOUNG FOLK'S HISTORY OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION BY JOHN D. CHAMPLIN, JR. Editor of the Young Folks' Cyclopædias, late Associate Editor of the COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED SCHOOL LIBRARY GRANITE FALLS, MINN. NO. 205 NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY K973.7 PREFACE. THE writer has endeavored to give, in the following pages, an unprejudiced and impartial account of our great Civil War. The difficulty of such a task can scarcely be appreciated by one who has not himself made the attempt. The echoes of the contest have scarcely yet died away, and the bitter feelings born of it are still apt to warp the judgment and to unfit men of either part of our country to estimate calmly the motives and acts of their opponents. Yet he who would write a truthful history of those times must necessarily divest himself of partisanship and lift himself above the plane of local prejudice. If the writer has failed to do this, it is not because he has not made an honest effort to weigh carefully the facts as narrated by both Northern and Southern writers, and to give each side its just dues. As the work is intended primarily for young folks, the author has aimed to give, in chronological order, a plain and concise account of the most striking events of the war, enlivened by sketches of the prominent men engaged in it, and by incidents and anecdotes illustrative of it. Though some of the stories are possibly apocryphal, many of the characteristic ones which serve to throw light upon the period and its events have been retained without any attempt to prove their truth or falsity. The writer has consulted the best available sources, and it is believed that the narrative is as nearly correct in its details as any previous work. The language used is simple, adapted to the understanding of the young, and technical words and expressions, when unavoidably used, are fully explained. The illustrations are intended to be equally trustworthy, having been selected not for mere picturesqueness, but for their value in elucidating the text. The larger part of them were drawn at the time and from the objects which they represent. 394. 631617 Maps of the principal battles and sieges are introduced wherever they are needed to make the narrative clearer and more intelligible. The flags of the Union and the several State and Confederate ensigns used in the war are shown in the two colored plates, and the principal songs which grew out of the struggle, with a brief account of their origin, are given in the Appendix. With the hope that this volume may be acceptable to those who participated in the contest, and may be deemed worthy to be put into the hands of their children as a trustworthy picture of the events in which they took a part, the author presents his work to the public with the consciousness that if it is not quite up to his own ideal, it is not because he has not labored earnestly to make it so. NEW YORK, October, 1881. J. D. C., JR. |