THE POPULAR HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA (1861-1865.) A COMPLETE NARRATIVE OF EVENTS, MILITARY, NAVAL, POLITI- THE WAR FOR THE UNION, WITH FULL IN- BROUGHT ON THE REBELLION. BY CAPT. GEORGE B. HERBERT, WITH PORTRAITS AND NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. NEW YORK: F. M. LUPTON, Publisher, No. 3 PARK PLACE. 1884. PREFACE. Nearly twenty years have sped silently away since the closing scenes of the Civil War in America were enacted, and those years, while they have silvered the locks of men who were participants in, or spectators of, the titanic fraternal conflict, have brought to man's estate, or to the very verge of it, almost a nation of young Americans, who were sleeping sweetly in swaddling clothes, while their mothers were waiting; watching and weeping over the news from the various battle-fields. It is to these budding citizens, more especially, that we address and dedicate this volume, in the humble though fervent hope that its pages may give them a fair knowledge and thorough appreciation of the great principles involved in the stupendous and costly National struggle which the cynical cant of the present day too frequently alludes to as "the recent unpleasantness." There have been more ponderous tomes, of inestimable value to the leisurely student, produced by profound scholars and competent critics on this all-absorbing theme; there have been also skeleton "apologies for a History of the Civil War,” serving the purpose only of giving the booksellers something to sell. Between these two there is a great gulf. The average reader shrinks from the task of hunting for crisp facts amid the thickets of theory and comment in the more pretentious volumes, and he turns away hungry for information after scanning a mere cartoon of a battle picture. We cannot hope to fill the chasm entirely, but trust that honest effort, supplementing a well-defined purpose, may succeed in throwing a pontoon bridge over it. It would be well-nigh impossible to present an absolutely accurate and perfectly full report of a war of such magnitude, extending over so wide an area and einbracing so long a period, |