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In Ten Volumes, Francis
Trevelyan Miller - Editor-in-Chief and Robert S. Lanier, Managing Editor.
Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special
Authorities (1911) (pdf)
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
We have reached a point In this country when we can look back, not without
love, not without intense pride, but without partisan passion, to the events
of the Civil Ľar. We have reached a point, I am glad to say, when the North
can admire to the full the heroes of the South, and the South admire to the
full the heroes of the North, There is a monument in Quebec that always
commended itself to me - a monument to commemorate the battle of the Plains
of Abraham. On one face of that beautiful structure is the name of Montcalm,
and on the opposite side the name of Wolfe. That always seemed to me to be
the acme of what we ought to reach in this country; and I am glad to say
that in my own alma mater, Yale, we have established an association for the
purpose of erecting within her academic precincts a memorial not to the
Northern Yale men who died, nor to the Southern Yale men who died; but to
the Yale men who died in the Civil War.
President Taft
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTORY
ON this semi-centennial of
the American Civil War—the war of the modern Roses in the Western
World—these volumes are dedicated to the American people in tribute to the
courage and the valor with which they met. one of the greatest crises that a
nation has ever known—a crisis that changed the course of civilization. We
look back at Napoleon through the glamor of time, without fully realizing
that here on our own continent arc battle-grounds more noble in their
purport than all the wars of the ancient regimes. The decades have shrouded
the first American Revolution in romance, but the time has now come when
this second American revolution, at the turning point of its first half
century, is to become an American epic in which nearly three and a half
million men gathered on the battle-line to offer their lives for principles
that were dear to them.
It is as an American “Battle Abbey” that these pages are opened on this
anniversary, so that the eyes of the generations may look upon the actual
scenes—not upon the tarnished muskets, the silenced cannon, nor the
battle-stained flag, but upon the warriors themselves standing on the
firing-line in the heroic struggle when the hosts of the North and the
legions of the South met on the battle-grounds of a nation’s ideals, with
the destiny of a continent hanging in the balance. And what a tribute it is
to American character to be able to gather about these pages in peace and
brotherhood, without malice and without dissension, within a generation from
the greatest fratricidal tragedy in the annals of mankind. The vision is no
longer blinded by heart wounds, but as Americans we can see only the heroic
self-sacrifice of these men who battled for the decision of one of the
world’s greatest problems.
In this first volume, standing literally before the open door to the “Battle
Abbey,” in which the vision of war is to be revealed in all its reality, I
take this privilege to refer briefly to a few of the intimate desires that
have led to this revelation of The Photographic History of the Civil War. As
one stands in the library of the War Department at Washington, or before the
archives of the American libraries, he feels that the last word of evidence
must have been recorded. Nearly seven thousand treatises, containing varying
viewpoints relating to this epoch in our national development, have been
written —so Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian at the Congressional Library at
Washington, tells me; while in my home city of Hartford, which is a typical
American community, I find nearly two thousand works similar to those that
are within the reach of all the American people in every part of the
country.
With this great inheritance before us, military writers have informed me
that they cannot understand why the American people have been so little
interested in this remarkable war. Great generals have told how they led
their magnificent armies in battle; military tacticians have mapped and
recorded the movements of regiments and corps with technical accuracy, and
historians have faithfully discussed the causes and the effects of this
strange crisis in civilization—all of which is a permanent tribute to
American scholarship. I have come to the conclusion that the lack of popular
interest is because this is not a military nation. The great heart of
American citizenship knows little of military maneuver, which is a science
that requires either life-study or tradition to cultivate an interest in it.
The Americans are a peace-loving people, but when once aroused they are a
mighty moral and physical fighting force. It is not their love for the art
of war that has caused them to take up arms. It is the impulse of justice
that permeates the Western World. The American people feel the pulse of life
itself; they love the greater emotions that cause men to meet danger face to
face. Their hearts beat to the martial strain of the national anthem “The
Star Spangled Banner” and they feel the melody in that old Marseillaise of
the Confederacy, “Dixie,” for in them they catch mental visions of the
sweeping lines under floating banners at the battle-front; they hear the
roar of the guns and the elatter of cavalry; but more than that—they feel
again the spirit that leads men to throw themselves into the cannon’s flame.
The Photographic History of the Civil War conies on this anniversary to
witness a people’s valor; to testify in photograph to the true story of how
a devoted people whose fathers had stood shoulder to shoulder for the ideal
of liberty in the American Revolution, who had issued to the world the
declaration that all men are created politically free and equal, who had
formulated the Constitution that dethroned mediaeval monarchy and founded a
new republic to bring new hope to the races of the earth—parted at the
dividing line of a great economic problem and stood arrayed against each
other in the greatest fratricidal tragedy that the world has ever witnessed,
only to be reunited and to stand, fifty years later, hand in hand for the
betterment of mankind, pledging themselves to universal peaee and
brotherhood.
This is the American epic that is told in these time-stained photographs—an
epic which in romance and chivalry is more inspiring than that of the olden
knighthood; brother against brother, father against son, men speaking the
same language, living under the same flag, offering their lives for that
which they believed to be right. No Grecian phalanx or Roman legion ever
knew truer manhood than in those days on the American continent when the
Anglo-Saxon met Anglo-Saxon in the decision of a constitutional principle
that beset their beloved nation. It was more than Napoleonic, for its
warriors battled for principle rather than conquest, for right rather than
power.
This is the spirit of these volumes, and it seems to me that it must be the
spirit of every true American. It is the sacred heritage of Anglo-Saxon
freedom won at Runnymede. I recall General Gordon, an American who turned
the defeat of war into the victory of citizenship in peace, once saying:
“What else could be expected of a people in whose veins commingled the blood
of the proud cavaliers of England, the blood of those devout and resolute
men who protested against the grinding exactions of the Stuarts; the blood
of the stalwart Dissenters and of the heroic Highlanders of Scotland, and of
the sturdy Presbyterians of Ireland; the blood of those defenders of freedom
who came from the mountain battlements of Switzerland, whose signal lights
summoned her people to gather to their breasts the armfuls of spears to make
way for liberty.” It was a great battle-line of Puritan, of Huguenot, of
Protestant, of Catholic, of Teuton, and Celt—every nation and every religion
throwing its sacrifice on the altar of civilization.
The causes of the American Civil War will always be subject to academic
controversy, eaeli side arguing conscientiously from its own viewpoint. It
is unnecessary to linger in these pages over the centuries of economic
growth that came to a crisis in the American nation. In the light of modern
historical understanding it was the inevitable result of a sociological
system that had come down through the ages before there was a republic on
the Western continent, and which finally came to a focus through the
conflicting interests that developed in the upbuilding of American
civilization. When Jefferson and Madison construed our constitution in one
way, and Washington and Hamilton in another, surely it is not strange that
their descendants should have differed. There is glory enough for all—for
North, for South, for East, for West, on these battle-grounds of a people’s
traditions—a grander empire than Casar's legions won for Rome.
To feel the impulse of both the North and the South is the desire of these
volumes. When, some years ago, I left the portals of Trinity College, in the
old abolition town of Hartford, Conn., to enter the halls of Washington and
Lee University in historic Lexington in the hills of Virginia, I felt for
the first time as a Northerner, indigenous to the soil, what it means to be
a Southerner. I, who had bowed my head from childhood to the greatness of
Grant, looked upon my friends bowing their heads before the mausoleum of
Lee. I stood with them as they laid the April flowers on the graves of their
dead, and I felt the heart-beat of the Confederacy. When I returned to my
New England home it was to lay the laurel and the May flowers on the graves
of my dead, and I felt the heart-beat of the Republic—more than that, I felt
the impulse of humanity and the greatness of all men.
When I now turn these pages I realize what a magnificent thing it is to have
lived; how wonderful is man and his power to blaze the path for progress ! I
am proud that my heritage runs back through nearly three hundred years to
the men who planted the seed of liberty in the New World into which is
flowing the blood of the great races of the earth; a nation whose sinews are
built from the strong men of the ages, and in whose hearts beat the impulses
that have inspired the centuries—a composite of the courage, the
perseverance, and the fortitude of the world’s oldest races, commingled into
one great throbbing body. It is a young race, but its exploits have equalled
those of the heroic age in the Grecian legends and surpass Leonidas and his
three hundred at Thermopylae.
In full recognition of the masterly works of military authorities that now
exist as invaluable historical evidence, these volumes present the American
Civil War from an entirely original viewpoint. The collection of photographs
is in itself a sufficient contribution to military and historical record,
and the text is designed to present the mental pictures of the inspiring
pageantry in the war between the Red and the White Roses in America, its
human impulses, and the ideals that it represents in the heart of humanity.
The military movements of the
armies have been exhaustively studied properly to stage the great scenes
that are herein enacted, but the routine that may burden the memory or
detract from the broader, martial picture that lies before the reader has
been purposely avoided. It is the desire to leave impressions rather than
statistics; mental visions and human inspiration rather than military
knowledge, especially as the latter is now so abundant in American
literature. In every detail the contradictory evidence of the many
authorities has been weighed carefully to present the narrative fairly and
impartially. It is so conflicting regarding numbers in battle and killed and
wounded that the Government records have been followed, as closely as
possible.
The hand of the historian may falter, or his judgment may fail, but the
final record of the American Civil War is told in these time-dimmed
negatives. The reader may conscientiously disagree with the text, but we
must all be of one and the same mind when we look upon the photographic
evidence. It is in these photographs that all Americans can meet on the
common ground of their beloved traditions. Here we are all united at the
shrine where our fathers fought—Northerners or Southerners—and here the
generations may look upon the undying record of the valor of those who
fought to maintain the Union and those who fought for independence from
it—each according to his own interpretation of the Constitution that bound
them into a great republic of states.
These photographs are appeals to peace; they are the most convincing
evidence of the tragedy of war. They bring it before the generations so
impressively that one begins to understand the meaning of the great movement
for universal brotherhood that is now passing through the civilized world.
Mr. William Short, the secretary of the New York Peace Society, in speaking
of them, truly says that they are the greatest arguments for peace that the
world has ever seen. Their mission is more than to record history; it is to
make history—to mould the thought of the generations as everlasting
witnesses of the price of war.
As the founder of this memorial library, and its editor-in-chief, it is my
pleasure to give historical record to Mr. Edward Bailey Eaton, Mr. Herbert
Myrick, and Mr. J. Frank Drake, of the Patriot Publishing Company, of
Springfield, Mass., owners of the largest private collection of original
Brady-Gardner Civil War negatives in existence, by whom this work was
inaugurated, and to Mr. Egbert Gilliss Handy, president of The Search-Light
Library of New York, through whom it was organized for its present
development by the Review of Reviews Company. These institutions have all
co-operated to realize the national and impartial conception of this work.
The result, we hope, is a more friendly, fair, and intimate picture of
America’s greatest sorrow and greatest glory than has perhaps been possible
under the conditions that preceded this semi-centennial anniversary.
To President William Howard Taft, who has extended his autographed message
to the North and the South, the editors take pleasure in recording their
deep appreciation; also to Generals Sickles and Buckner, the oldest
surviving generals in the Federal and Confederate armies, respectively, on
this anniversary; to General Frederick Dent Grant and General G. W. Custis
Lee, the sons of the great warriors who led the armies through the American
Crisis! to the Honorable Robert Todd Lincoln, former Secretary of War; to
James W. Cheney, Librarian in the War Department at Washington; to Dr.
Edward S. Holden, Librarian at the United States Military Academy at West
Point, for their consideration and advice, and to the officers of the Grand
Army of the Republic, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the United
Confederate Veterans, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the other
memorial organizations that have shown an appreciation of the intent of this
work. We are especially indebted to Mr. John McElroy, editor of the National
Tribune; General Bennett II. Young, the historian of the United Confederate
Veterans; General Grenville M. Dodge; Colonel S. A. Cunningham, founder and
editor of the Confederate Veteran, General Irvine Walker, General William E.
Mickle, and to the many others who, in their understanding and appreciation
have rendered valuable assistance in the realization of its special mission
to the American people on this semi-centennial.
This preface should not close without a final word as to the difficulty of
the problems that confronted the military, historical, and other authorities
whose contributions have made the text of The Photographic History of the
Civil War, whose names are signed to their historical contributions
throughout these volumes, and the spirit in which, working with the
editorial staff of the Review of Reviews, they have met these problems. The
impossibility of deciding finally the difference of opinion in the movements
of the Civil War has been generously recognized. With all personal and
partisan arguments have been set aside in the universal and hearty effort of
all concerned to fulfil the obligations of this work. I ask further
privilege to extend my gratitude to my personal assistants, Mr. Walter R.
Bickford, Mr. Arthur Forrest Burns, and Mr. Wallace H. Miller.
And now, as we stand to-day, fellowmen in the great republic that is
carrying the torch in the foreranks of the world’s civilization, let us
clasp hands across the long-gone years as reunited Americans. I can close
these introductory words with no nobler tribute than those of the mighty
warriors who led the great armies to battle. It was General Robert E. Lee
who, after the war, gave this advice to a Virginia mother, “Abandon all
these animosities and make your sons Americans,’’ and General Ulysses S.
Grant, whose appeal to his countrymen must always be an admonition against
war: “Let us have peace.”
FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER,
Editor-iu-Chief.
Hartford, Connecticut, Fiftieth Anniversary Lincoln’s Inauguration.
Volume 1 The Opening Battles
Volume 2 Two Years of Grim War
Volume 3 The Decisive Battles
Volume 4 The Cavalry
Volume 5 Forts and Artillery
Volume 6 The Navies
Volume 7 Prisons and Hospitals
Volume 8 Soldier Life and Secret Service
Volume 9 Poetry and Eloquence of Blue and Gray
Volume 10 Armies and Leaders |
