The Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina
9781465647061
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It will be long before the history of the late war can be soberly and impartially written. The passions that have been evoked by it will not soon slumber, and it is perhaps expecting too much of human nature, to believe that a fair and candid statement of facts on either side will soon be made. There is as yet too much to be forgotten—too much to be forgiven. The future historian of the great struggle will doubtless have ample material at his disposal; but from a vast mass of conflicting; evidence he will have to sift, combine, and arrange the grains of truth—a work to which few men of this generation are competent. But meanwhile there is much to be done in collecting evidence, especially by those who desire that justice shall be done to the South: and this evidence, it is to be hoped, will be largely drawn from private sources. History has in general no more invaluable and irrefragable witnesses for the truth than are to be found in the journals, memoranda, and private correspondence of the prominent and influential men who either acted in, or were compelled to remain quiet observers of the events of their day. Especially will this be found to be the case when posterity shall sit in judgment on the past four years in the South. From no other sources can so fair a representation be made of the conflicts of opinion, or of the motives of action in the time when madness seemed to rule the hour, when all individual and all State efforts for peace were powerless, when sober men were silenced, and when even the public press could hardly be considered free. If it be true of the South in general, that even in the most excited localities warning voices were raised in vain, and that a strong undercurrent of good sense and calm reflection undoubtedly existed—overborne for a time by the elements of strife and revolution—more especially and with tenfold emphasis is it true of the State of North-Carolina.
