presented to the reader, and, unless supported by the evidence I offer, must fall to the ground.
I have striven to avoid unnecessary personality, but the occasional danger of this fault has been an insignificant consideration, when compared with the importance of historical truth. In matters of so much importance as those of which I write, there should be no secrecy, when the emergency which demanded secrecy is past. WASHINGTON, 1867.
THE maps for this volume have been prepared under my own direction, and from official sources. I have endeavored to have them entirely accurate, and, on one map or another, to show the geographical position of every locality mentioned in the text. The positions of the troops have, without exception, been declared correct, by the general of the army. The maps of the campaign and of the siege of Vicksburg are simply reductions from those in the engineer bureau, the former by Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, the latter by Major F. E. Prime, Captain C. B. Comstock, and Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson; that of the battle of Chattanooga was made by General W. F. Smith, to accompany his report of engineer operations during the Chattanooga campaign; those of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were made by Colonel (afterwards Major-General) McPherson, who accompanied General Grant during those campaigns, as engineer. All the others were drawn under my own supervision. The map of the battle of Shiloh was made from a sketch drawn by Colonel McPherson, who was the only engineer officer on that field. It differs from the map in the engineer bureau, but is the only accurate map of Shiloh that I have seen. It has been corrected by both General Grant and General Sherman. When the scale of operations is too large to be illustrated on the map accompanying any particular chapter, the map of the theatre of war will be found useful by the careful reader.