INTRODUCTORY.
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 appealad 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 personalpronoun 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 paledaway 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 insighing 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.
It has been my fate to see Americans under their most unfavourable aspect; with all their national feelings, as well as the vices of our common humanity, exaggerated and developed by the terrible agonies of a civil war, and the throes of political revolution. Instead of the hum of industry, I heard the noise of cannon through the land. Society convulsed by cruel passions and apprehensions, and shattered by violence, presented its broken angles to the stranger, and I can readily conceive that the America I saw, was no more like the country of which her people boast so loudly, than the St. Lawrence when the ice breaks up, hurrying onwards the rugged drift and its snowy crust of crags, with hoarse roar, and crashing with irresistible force and fury to the sea, resembles the calm flow of the stately river on a summer’s day.
The swarming communities and happy homes of the New England States—the most complete exhibition of the best results of the American system—it was deniedme to witness; but if I was deprived of the gratification of worshipping the frigid intellectualism of Boston, I saw the effects in the field, among the men I met, of the teachings and theories of the political, moral, and religious professors, who are the chiefs of that universal Yankee nation, as they delight to call themselves, and there recognised the radical differences which must sever them for ever from a true union with the Southern States.
The contest, of which no man can predict the end or result, still rages, but notwithstanding the darkness and clouds which rest upon the scene, I place so much reliance on the innate good qualities of the great nations which are settled on the Continent of North America, as to believe they will be all the better for the sweet uses of adversity; learning to live in peace with their neighbours, adapting their institutions to their necessities, and working out, not in their old arrogance and insolence—mistaking material prosperity for good government—but in fear and trembling, the experiment on which they have cast so much discredit, and the glorious career which misfortune and folly can arrest but for a time.
W. H. RUSSELL.
London, December 8, 1862.