Chapter I: Front Matter

[Frontispiece illustration: COUNCIL OF WAR BEFORE
THE BATTLE OF PITTSBURG LANDING. (Page 145.)]

THIRTEEN MONTHS IN THE REBEL ARMY

[By William G. Stevenson]

Being
A NARRATIVE OF PERSONAL ADVENTURES
in
THE INFANTRY, ORDNANCE, CAVALRY, COURIER,
and
HOSPITAL SERVICES;
with
AN EXHIBITION OF THE POWER, PURPOSES,
EARNESTNESS, MILITARY DESPOTISM, AND
DEMORALIZATION OF THE SOUTH.

BY AN IMPRESSED NEW YORKER.

NEW YORK:
A. S. BARNES & BURR,
51 & 53 JOHN-STREET.
1862.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, BY A. S. BARNES & BURR, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

RENNIE, SHEA & LINDSAY, STEREOTYPERS AND ELECTROTYPER 81, 83, & 85 CENTRE-STREET, New York.

GEORGE W. WOOD, PRINTER, No. 2 Dutch-st., N.Y.

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[Transcriber's note: The following appeared before
the frontispiece and title page in the original book.]

A VIEW OF THIS BOOK
IN PROOF-SHEETS.

As our last form was going to press we received the
following note from a Minister of the Gospel of this
city, whose name is widely known, and as widely
respected, both in Europe and America.
A.S. BARNES & BURR, Publishers.
NEW YORK, Oct. 1, 1862.

Inscrutable "Dixie!" your "adversary has written a book," as
damaging to Rebeldom as the Monitor to the Merrimac. The
secrets of Rebel counsels and resources have been well
concealed, while National plans have been penetrated by
traitorous eyes and revealed by treasonable tongues. At last
the vail has been uplifted, and we have more of valuable,
reliable information, as to the internal condition of
Jeff-dom and its armies, than has leaked out since the fall
of Sumter.

"Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army" gave "An Impressed New
Yorker" rare opportunities of knowing what is to be known
outside of the Richmond Cabinet. Let a sharp-witted young
man make his way from Memphis to Columbus and Bowling Green,
and thence to Nashville, Selma, Richmond, and Chattanooga;
put him into the battles of Belmont and Shiloh; bring him in
contact with Morgan, Polk, Breckenridge, and a bevy of
Confederate generals; employ him consecutively in the
infantry, ordnance, cavalry, courier, and hospital services;
then put a pen in his hand, and if his sketches of men and
things in the land of darkness have not interest and value,
pray what would you read in war-time?

The writer has been favored with the perusal of the
proof-sheets of this remarkable book. Many of its incidents
had had the charm of personal narration from the lips of the
author; but it is only just to say, that the lucid, graphic
style of the author gives all the vividness of personal
description to the scenes and incidents of which he was an
eyewitness. That so many and such varied adventures should
have fallen to the lot of a single person, is passing
strange; and that he should have survived and escaped to
relate them, is, perhaps, yet stranger. That they were all
experienced substantially as related, none will doubt, when
the minute details of name, date, place, and surroundings
are found to be sketched with palpable truthfulness.

The temper of the book is scarcely less noteworthy than its
fund of incident and anecdote. Parson Brownlow's book and
speeches are brimful of invective. He's a good hater,
indeed. He claimed in his Academy of Music speech that, "If
there was any thing on God's earth that he was made for, it
was to pile up epithets against this infernal rebellion!"
_Chacun à son gout._ Our young author has struck a harder
blow at the Confederacy by his damaging facts, than if he
had intensified them with the vocabulary of profanity and
vituperation. There has been more than enough of bitter
words, North and South; it is now a question of strength,
and skill, and endurance. This book will teach us to respect
the energy, while we detest the principles, of this
stupendous rebellion.

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