The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes, Volume 9

About this book

THE spirit in which Dr. Miles has written his introduction and made his selections from the prose and poetry inspired by our Civil War, seems to me so admirable and so characteristically American as to need no praise and to suggest little comment that would not be superfluous. As is the case with the other volumes of this Photographic History of the Civil War,, the present anthology brings out clearly two facts in our national history that give us great encouragement as a people — the fact that, even when the flames of war burned most fiercely, the fraternal feeling between Americans of all sections showed no signs of perishing completely, and the fact that, despite the mistakes made during the period of Reconstruc- tion, the reestablishment of sympathy and confidence between the sections went forward with a speed and a thoroughness not previously experienced after civil wars. On these two facts alone one might base a justification of our experiment, if that word be applicable since 1865, in democratic government; and it is pleasant for the literary student to think that these facts are facts partly because of the beneficent influence exerted by our literature in affording our j)eople an opportunity to ex- press their better selves.