PREFACE.
The gallant Morgan has said that our independence is an achieved fact. “Privation and suffering have won it.” It is true that the noble South has been deprived of many of its wonted necessaries, not to say luxuries, by the present invasion of those disciples of Satan, commonly called “Yankees.” Paper, among other things, is scarce in the South, and paper may be turned into excellent account in the composition of cartridges, while metal that might be moulded into bullets is run into type. Yet newspapers and books are printed, and most of them eagerly read, especially any that have the most remote bearing upon the present contest. In these stern times of war’s realities, plain facts challenge our attention rather than the gaudy fiction of novels. Honey from Mount Hybla, or Nectar from Olympus, would fail on the palate, unless relieved by homelier viands; and it would certainly require considerable stoicism to sit down to a tale of imaginary woes and sorrows while one great wail is going up from our sick and wounded—an incredible amount of apathy to sit leisurely down to such a book under the shade of a tree while the nation is sending out a heartcry for reinforcements to our brave legions, in order to speedily defeat the unscrupulous enemy. This little book is intended as, and professes no more than a plain statement of facts, so that others may learn what I have read, seen and heard, without undergoing the pain of incarceration in the hands of Yankees, whose tyranny increases in proportion to the power they possess over their victims.