INSIDE: A CHRONICLE OF SECESSION.
BY GEORGE F. HARRINGTON.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS NAST.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1866.Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
TO
THE MEN AND THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH,
OVERCOME,
BUT AS THE GALLANT SHIP IS OVERCOME, BY THE GALES WHICH SMITE IT FROM GOD,
ONLY TO BEAR IT ONWARD;
OVERCOME, NOT OF MAN,
BUT BY THE SUBLIME WILL OF HEAVEN, TOO MIGHTY FOR THE MIGHTIEST TO RESIST,
COMPELLING ALL THINGS TOWARD THE HIGHEST WELFARE OF THE WORLD;
TO YOU
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, BY ONE, IF THE HUMBLEST, NOT THE LEAST SINCERE AND
DEVOTED OF YOUR NUMBER.
PREFACE.
[View Figure]
THE AUTHOR BURYING HIS MANUSCRIPT.
NOT a Preface merely for preface' sake, but as few words as possible by way of explanation.
This book was written in one of the centres of Secession. Begun at the outset, it grew with the growth thereof, and closed with its ending. Owing to peculiar circumstances, the writer, never out of the pale of Secession during its continuance, had full time and opportunity for as careful a study of the period as he could wish. If he has cast the result in the form of a fiction his work is none the less as essentially true as the dryest history ever penned; and will be acknowledged to be by all who, by reason of occupying a like position during the war, are competent to speak. And it is as true, in most respects, for one region in the South as for any other, the Secessionist as a class in all its varieties, and the Union men as a class in all its varieties, being, in every village throughout the South, very much the same as in Somerville.
The form of a novel was adopted chiefly to make it impossible for any one to identify the place in which the scene is laid and the characters acting therein. And that for this reason: The period embraced in the story is one which will be, in all its aspects, a phenomenon interesting to men for generations to come. Other volumes will treat of other features of this most remarkable period; this book aims only to photograph the social aspect thereof from a point entirely within; and it is a period altogether too sublime, both in its evil and its good, for any thing so short-lived and insect-like as mere personalities, which, as they buzz and sting but during their brief moment, should perish also and be forgotten within the same. Yes, if there be one drop of gall, a least splinter of wormwood in these pages, the writer is ignorant of it.
Born at, and having spent almost his entire life in, the South, the writer's first affections are, by that nature which attaches every thing that breathes to its own home, with and for the South. At the very same time he entertains a love yet larger and stronger for the nation of which the South is but a part, and is powerless to refuse conviction, both of head and heart, to the truth that the whole is greater than part of the whole. Above all does he yield reverence and affection, still beyond this, to Truth, Right, Conscience, God. A love herein without the least conflict in its three degrees of positive, comparative, superlative. Toward no one, during Secession, has his hatred been even stirred. For many a one, during that time, has the writer's pity been excited—his deepest pity for the guiltiest as being the most infatuated: glad that justice, human justice perhaps, Divine justice certainly, is to be meted out; glad, also, that, save in these page: 6-7[View Page 6-7] humble pages, to him is committed neither its determining nor the execution.
He claims no merit whatever above others, far better, mayhap, in every other respect than himself, for, being from his earliest memory, in every thought, emotion, word, deed, through all associations, oppositions, circumstances, whatever they were, a Union man—claims no merit for this, since it required no exertion on his part, he being such by a sort of nature, as a cedar-tree is not a cypress, and as an oak-tree is an oak. Conscious of many a shortcoming in other respects, he has nothing to reproach himself with in this, unless it be for excess of love to his country, which, perhaps, the times may excuse.
The very manuscript from which these lines are printed could tell a tale of its own, apart from that which it narrates, in confirmation of this. While writing it the author was perfectly aware that his life would have paid the forfeit had a written page been discovered. On more than one Sunday the wife of the writer has borne the manuscript to church concealed about her person, in terror of leaving it, like powder exposed to chance sparks, at home. However, as our story shows, that was but a small specimen of the totally new set of duties, unprovided for in the marriage ceremony, which wives had to perform for Union husbands during Secession. On two occasions the writer was obliged to bury his manuscript in the ground, thereby damaging it seriously. To that the printer whose misfortune it is to set up these pages will tearfully depone.
They say that even amidst rock and glacier, avalanche and tempest of Alpine regions, there spring flowers not unworthy the gathering. Who knows but it may be so with this volume, which has slowly and painfully matured its leaves under circumstances—But suppose we permit the book to speak for itself.
