Publisher's Synopsis
From the Author's PREFACE:
THE first draft of what is here offered to the reading public was sketched amid the whirlwinds of civil war, and while encompassed by the most exciting scenes and circumstances of violence, conspiracies, and sanguinary strife. It claims to be, for the most part, but a plain, unvarnished story of what happened under the author's own observation, during a reign of terror which has scarcely had a parallel in the history of our race.
It is hoped the courteous reader will not mistake the production for a work of imagination; the author is free to admit, however, that, in some cases, he has used fictitious names; and, also, that the conversations, dialogues, and soliloquies introduced more or less throughout the work are, in part at least, supposed. But no further than this has he used the guise of fiction, or essayed to idealize his subject; for we have come upon times when, of a truth, it may be said that "fact is stranger than fiction." For the marvellous, the wild, the thrilling, we no longer need to draw upon fancy; reality, now, exceeds the most highly-wrought creations of imagination, transcends the most startling coinage of the brain.
While the author has been solicitous to paint vividly and lifelike, yet he must insist that his picture is by no means overdrawn, or highly colored. The incidents related, the events and characters brought forward are real, and intended, without contributing aught to prejudice and passion, to make a fair and truthful impression on the candid mind. Should there be found, here and there, a passage that savors of acrimony, or betrays a spirit of vindictiveness, the indulgent reader will please bear in mind that the writer has had an interior view of the rebellion, and passed through an ordeal well calculated to set any frail mortal's blood on fire. For, from the beginning of the trouble, and long before the Federal Government had given the slightest protection to loyal citizens anywhere in the Southwest, he was constantly surrounded by lawless men, plotting traitors, and assassins, who, like bloodhounds, were ready to hunt down, rob, or murder, their patriotic neighbors.
Regarding the present conflict as a death-struggle between civilization and barbarism, liberty and slavery, loyalty and treason; and convinced that the great body of the Northern people have no adequate conception of the actual state of things at the South; and persuaded, also, that there is an apathy at the North, from which patriots need to be awakened at such a time of peril to the country, it is deemed at least pertinent to hold the mirror up to reality, and lift the curtain behind which the most shocking tragedies have been enacted, and in the shadow of which disloyal men, still skulk and traitors hide themselves.
The humble volume here respectfully submitted to the public is designed, without ostentation or pretension, to put a candle in every honest man's hand who needs more light on a subject confessedly of absorbing interest to us all.
