Chapter I: Front Matter

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Four Periods of American History

by

HILARY A. HERBERT, LL.D.

New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1912

Copyright, 1912, by Charles Scribner's Sons

Published April, 1912

TO MY GRANDCHILDREN

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
IN THE HOPE THAT ITS PERUSAL
WILL FOSTER IN THEM, AS CITIZENS OF THIS GREAT
REPUBLIC, A DUE REGARD FOR THE CONSTITUTION
OF THEIR COUNTRY
AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND

PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES

"Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship." That we find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading Livy's "History of the Civil Wars" (in which the historian's republican sympathies were freely expressed), and learning therefrom that there were two sides to the strife which rent Rome. As we are more than forty-six years distant from our own Civil War, is it not incumbent on Northerners to endeavor to see the Southern side? We may be certain that the historian a hundred years hence, when he contemplates the lining-up of five and one-half million people against twenty-two millions, their equal in religion, morals, regard for law, and devotion to the common Constitution, will, as matter of course, aver that the question over which they fought for four years had two sides; that all the right was not on one side and all the wrong on the other. The North should welcome, therefore, accounts of the conflict written by candid Southern men.

Mr. Herbert, reared and educated in the South, believing in the moral and economical right of slavery, served as a Confederate soldier during the war, but after Appomattox, when thirty-one years old, he told his father he had arrived at the conviction that slavery was wrong. Twelve years later, when home-rule was completely restored to the South (1877), he went into public life as a Member of Congress, sitting in the House for sixteen years. At the end of his last term, in 1893, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Cleveland, whom he faithfully served during his second administration.

Such an experience is an excellent training for the treatment of any aspect of the Civil War. Mr. Herbert's devotion to the Constitution, the Union, and the flag now equals that of any soldier of the North who fought against him. We should expect therefore that his work would be pervaded by practical knowledge and candor.

After a careful reading of the manuscript I have no hesitation in saying that the expectation is realized. Naturally unable to agree entirely with his presentation of the subject, I believe that his work exhibits a side that entitles it to a large hearing. I hope that it will be placed before the younger generation, who, unaffected by any memory of the heat of the conflict, may truly say:

Tros Tyriusve, mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

JAMES FORD RHODES.

BOSTON, _November_, 1911.