The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placedin the public domain.
RECOLLECTIONS
OF
THE CIVIL WAR
FROM A CHILD’S POINT OF VIEW
PRICE 50 CENTS
1862
PREFACE OR APOLOGY
When one writes a book, a preface is in order.Mine shall be by way of explanation. The onlyapology I have to offer for writing this little personalpronoun “I” story is the very simple onethat it is true. It has been said that “we nevertalk so well as when talking of ourselves.” Be thatas it may, in telling my own story, I can tell it onlyin the first person. It is a story that is very dearto me, probably much more so than it will ever beto any one else. In writing it I have lived it allover, and it has been so real to me that I haveseemed to be again within hospital walls, peopledby those whom I have called up from the shadowsof the past. In fancy, my mother, whose name isinterwoven as a golden thread throughout the fabricof the story, has been with me, and I have almostfelt the “touch of a vanished hand” and heardthe “sound of a voice that is still.” Page afterpage has been written beneath her picture on thewall, and as I have lifted my tear-blinded eyes withyearning gaze to her sweet face, the brown eyeshave looked lovingly down upon me as thoughsmiling approval upon my work. Oh, that I hadundertaken it while she was yet with me!
It may be questioned that I have written frommemory—or it may be a matter of surprise that Ihave remembered so well. While my mother livedthis period in our lives was often talked of and itsmemory kept green. My father, being ill in thesecond story of the hospital, knew little ornothing of the experiences I underwent at Corinth,but was more familiar with what took placeat Jackson. Five or six letters written by mymother to friends in the North have been carefullypreserved. They were mostly hurriedly writtenand contain only brief allusions to our doings, butfrom them I have gathered dates and hours of arrivaland departure, and by them my memory hasbeen refreshed on several points. But for the mostpart I have been entirely dependent upon my ownmemory. I have written only of scenes and eventsthat I remember best. Many of them are as clear tome as the happenings of yesterday, while some half-fadedmemories have struggle