Editor's Preface.
when I was called by the publisher to the task of editing this work, I was at first doubtful as to the extent and limit of my labors.
The English version of Mr. L. F. Tasistro, an experienced translator, had already been made, and was placed in my hands.
After a very careful revision of it, particularly as to military details and technicalities, with which my former life had rendered me more familiar, I found myself really limited to seeing the volume properly through the press, with scarcely a comment.
The very few editorial notes are upon points of fact or statistics.
It would have been unbecoming in me to argue upon controverted questions, national, political, or military, upon which, after careful investigation and mature deliberation, the author has expressed himself decidedly.
Least of all have I considered it within my province to say a word as to his estimates of individuals and their relations to the government.
He has himself said that his history was written for European readers, who desire to know only his impressions and conclusions.
But the book will be largely read in this country by people more capable of judging its facts and its philosophy.
This I may be permitted to say: He has produced a book displaying careful research, cool judgment, and a manifest purpose to be just to all. It is vigorous in style, scholarly without a touch of pedantry; his battle-pictures are effective from their great simplicity; the battle fights itself under the reader's eyes.
So varied and skilful is the handling of the narrative that the interest does not flag for a moment, even when he deals with dry statistics.
In a large and philosophic view of American institutions he has rivalled De Tocqueville.
Although his service was short in this country, he gained a full knowledge of the machinery and working of our government, and was a witness of the marvellous creation of a colossal army out of nothing.
He has thus been enabled to use intelligently the large materials he has collected, and to present the first portion of what must be regarded as an admirable history of the greatest war, as to numbers, extent of territory, and importance of issue, the world has ever seen.
Not one word has been altered or omitted from the original; the only change is in form.
To bring it more readily within the scope of all who desire to read it, the first two French volumes have been compressed into one of the American edition, and a similar arrangement will be adopted for the following volumes.
The maps necessary to a clear understanding of the text have been exactly reproduced; only the general maps of large sections of country have been omitted, as they may be supplied by any good American atlas within the reader's reach.
The French metrical system of measurement has been retained in the translation, because it is already greatly used in this country and taught in our schools, and because, although on a scale the transfer is easy from miles to kilometres, etc., it is difficult to make the transfer in decimals throughout the text.
For convenience the reader is reminded that a metre= 39.38 American inches; a centimetre, the one hundredth of a metre, = .3938 of an inch; kilometer=.62 of a mile.
It may further be observed that as the map scales are simply fractions of any unit, as 60,000 to 1, etc., distances may be laid off at once in our measures by assuming our unit.
H. C. Fountain Hill, South Bethlehem, Nov. 9, 1875.
