Eliza Frances Andrews...

To edit oneself after the lapse of nearly half a century is like taking an appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. The changes of thought and feeling between the middle of the Nineteenth and the beginning of the Twentieth century are so great that the impulsive young person who penned the following record and the white-haired woman who edits it, are no more the same than were Philip drunk with the wine of youth and passion and Philip sobered by the lessons of age and experience. The author's l

Explanatory note.-At the time of this narrative, the writer's eldest sister, Mrs. Troup Butler, was living alone with her Two little children on a plantation in Southwest Georgia, between Albany and Thomasville. Besides our father, who was Sixty-two when the war began, and a little brother who was only Twelve when it closed, we had no male relations out of the army, and she lived there with no other protector, for a good part of the time, than the negroes themselves. There were not over a Hundre

Explanatory note.-During the period embraced in this chapter the great black tide of destruction that had swept over Georgia turned its course northward from Savannah to break a few weeks later (Feb. 17) in a cataract of blood and fire on the city of Columbia. At the same time the great tragedy of Andersonville was going on under our eyes; and farther off, in Old Virginia, Lee and his immortals were struggling in the toils of the net that was drawing them on to the tragedy of Appomattox. To put

Explanatory note.-There is hardly anything in this chapter but will easily explain itself. The war was virtually over when we left our sister, though we did not know it, and the various raids and forays alluded to in the journal were really nothing but the march of victorious generals to take possession of a conquered country. Communication was so interrupted that we did not hear of the Fall of Richmond till the 6th of April, Four days after it happened, and no certain news of Lee's surrender re

Explanatory note.-The little town of Washington, Ga., where the remaining events of this narrative took place, was the center of a wealthy planting district about Fifty miles above Augusta, on a branch of the Georgia Railroad. The population at this time was.about 2,200, One-Third of which was probably white. Like most of the older towns in the State it is built around an open square, in the center of which stood the quaint old county courthouse so often mentioned in this part of the diary, with

Explanatory note.-The circumstances under which this part of the diary were written now belong to the world's history, and need no explanation here. The bitterness that pervades its pages may seem regrettable to those who have never passed through the like experiences, but if the reader will “Uncentury” himself for a moment and try to realize the position of the old slaveholders, a proud and masterful race, on seeing bands of their former slaves marching in triumph through their streets, he may

Explanatory note.— I would gladly have left out the family dissensions about politics with which this and the preceding chapter abound, could it have been done consistently with faithfulness to the original narrative which I have sought to maintain in giving to the public this contemporary record of the war time. It is due to my father's memory, however, to say that his devotion to the Union was not owing to any want of sympathy with his own section, but to his belief that the interests of the S

Explanatory note.-I have no apology to make for the indignation and resentment that fill the remaining pages of this record. The time has come, I believe, when the nation's returning sense of justice has outgrown the blind passions engendered by war sufficiently to admit that the circumstances narrated fully justified the feelings they awakened. These events mark the beginning of that deplorable succession of blunders and outrages that has bequeathed us the most terrible legacy of the war-the ra

Here the record ends, amid the gloom and desolation of defeat— a gloom that was to be followed ere long by the still blacker darkness of Reconstruction. Yet, I would not have the reader draw from its pages a message of despair, but of hope and courage under difficulties; for disaster cheerfully borne and honorably overcome, is not a tragedy, but a triumph. And this, the most glorious of all conquests, belongs to the South. Never in all history, has any people recovered itself so completely from