My Diary: North and South (Complete‪)‬

A book which needs apologies ought never to have been written. This is a canon of criticism so universally accepted, that authors have abstained of late days from attempting to disarm hostility by confessions of weakness, and are almost afraid to say a prefatory word to the gentle reader.

It is not to plead in mitigation of punishment or make an appeal ad misericordiam, I break through the ordinary practice, but by way of introduction and explanation to those who may read these volumes, I may remark that they consist for the most part of extracts from the diaries and note-books which I assiduously kept whilst I was in the United States, as records of the events and impressions of the hour. I have been obliged to omit many passages which might cause pain or injury to individuals still living in the midst of a civil war, but the spirit of the original is preserved as far as possible, and I would entreat my readers to attribute the frequent use of the personal pronoun and personal references to the nature of the sources from which the work is derived, rather than to the vanity of the author.

Had the pages been literally transcribed, without omitting a word, the fate of one whose task it was to sift the true from the false and to avoid error in statements of fact, in a country remarkable for the extraordinary fertility with which the unreal is produced, would have excited some commiseration; but though there is much extenuated in these pages, there is not, I believe, aught set down in malice. My aim has been to retain so much relating to events passing under my eyes, or to persons who have become famous in this great struggle, as may prove interesting at present, though they did not at the time always appear in their just proportions of littleness or magnitude.

During my sojourn in the States, many stars of the first order have risen out of space or fallen into the outer darkness. The watching, trustful, millions have hailed with delight or witnessed with terror the advent of a shining planet or a splendid comet, which a little observation has resolved into watery nebulæ. In the Southern hemisphere, Bragg and Beauregard have given place to Lee and Jackson. In the North M‘Dowell has faded away before M‘Clellan, who having been put for a short season in eclipse by Pope, only to culminate with increased effulgence, has finally paled away before Burnside. The heroes of yesterday are the martyrs or outcasts of to-day, and no American general needs a slave behind him in the triumphal chariot to remind him that he is a mortal. Had I foreseen such rapid whirls in the wheel of fortune I might have taken more note of the men who were below, but my business was not to speculate but to describe.

The day I landed at Norfolk, a tall lean man, ill-dressed, in a slouching hat and wrinkled clothes, stood, with his arms folded and legs wide apart, against the wall of the hotel looking on the ground. One of the waiters told me it was “Professor Jackson,” and I have been plagued by suspicions that in refusing an introduction which was offered to me, I missed an opportunity of making the acquaintance of the man of the stonewalls of Winchester. But, on the whole, I have been fortunate in meeting many of the soldiers and statesmen who have distinguished themselves in this unhappy war.

Although I have never for one moment seen reason to change the opinion I expressed in the first letter I wrote from the States, that the Union as it was could never be restored, I am satisfied the Free States of the North will retain and gain great advantages by the struggle, if they will only set themselves at work to accomplish their destiny, nor lose their time in sighing over vanished empire or indulging in abortive dreams of conquest and schemes of vengeance; but my readers need not expect from me any dissertations on the present or future of the great republics, which have been so loosely united by the Federal band, nor any description of the political system, social life, manners or customs of the people, beyond those which may be incidentally gathered from these pages.