Читать книгу The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences - Hilary A. Herbert - Страница 3

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In 1890 Mr. L. E. Chittenden, who had been United States Treasurer under President Lincoln, published an interesting account of $10,000,000 United States bonds secretly sent to England, as he said, in 1862, and he told all about what thereupon took place across the water. It was a reminiscence. General Charles Francis Adams in his recent instructive volume, "Studies Military and Diplomatic," takes up this narrative and, in a chapter entitled "An Historical Residuum," conclusively shows from contemporaneous evidence that the bonds were sent, not in 1862, but in 1863, but that, as for the rest of the story, the residuum of truth in it was about like the speck of moisture that is left when a soap bubble is pricked by a needle.

General Adams did not mean that Mr. Chittenden knew he was drawing on his imagination. He was only demonstrating that one who intends to write history cannot rely on his memory.

The author, in the following pages, is undertaking to write a connected story of events that happened, most of them, in his lifetime, and as to many of the most important of which he has vivid recollections; but, save in one respect, he has not relied upon his own memory for any important fact. The picture he has drawn of the relations between the slave-holder and non-slave-holder in the South is, much of it, given as he recollects it. His opportunities for observation were somewhat extensive, and here he is willing to be considered in part as a witness. Elsewhere he has relied almost entirely upon contemporaneous written evidence, memory, however, often indicating to him sources of information.

Nowhere are there so many valuable lessons for the student of American history as in the story of the great sectional movement of 1831, and of its results, which have profoundly affected American conditions through generation after generation.

An effort is here made to tell that story succinctly, tracing it, step after step, from cause to effect. The subject divides itself naturally into four historic periods:

1. The anti-slavery crusade, 1831 to 1860.

2. Secession and four years of war, 1861 to 1865.

3. Reconstruction under the Lincoln-Johnson plan, with the overthrow by Congress of that plan and the rule of the negro and carpet-bagger, from 1865 to 1876.

4. Restoration of self-government in the South, and the results that have followed.

The greater part of the book is devoted to the first period—1831 to 1860, the period of causation. The sequences running through the three remaining periods are more briefly sketched.

Italics, throughout the book, it may be mentioned here, are the author's.

Now that the country is happily reunited in a Union which all agree is indissoluble, the South wants the true history of the times here treated of spread before its children; so does the North. The mistakes that were committed on both sides during that lamentable and prolonged sectional quarrel (and they were many) should be known of all, in order that like mistakes may not be committed in the future. The writer has, with diffidence, attempted to lay the facts before his readers, and so to condense the story that it may be within the reach of the ordinary student. How far he has succeeded will be for his readers to say. The verdict he ventures to hope for is that he has made an honest effort to be fair.

The author takes this occasion to thank that accomplished young teacher of history, Mr. Paul Micou, for valuable suggestions, and his friend, Mr. Thomas H. Clark, who with his varied attainments has aided him in many ways.

Hilary A. Herbert.

Washington, D. C., March, 1912.