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A Rebel's Recollections
A Rebel's Recollections
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
"A Rebel's Recollections" was published in 1874. It has ever since enjoyed a degree of public favor that is perhaps beyond its merits.
However that may be, my friends among the historians and the critical students of history have persuaded me that, for the sake of historical completeness, I should include in this new edition of the book the prefatory essay on "The Old Régime in the Old Dominion," which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1875.
I am doing so with the generous permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., publishers of the Atlantic Monthly.
The scholars have said to me and to my publishers that during its thirty years of life the book has become a part of that body of literature to which historians must look as the sources of history. They have urged that the introductory chapter, now for the first time included in the volume, is an essential part of that material of history.
The story of the book and of this introductory chapter may, perhaps, have some interest for the reader. In that belief I tell it here.
In the year, 1873, I was editing the weekly periodical, Hearth and Home. I went to Boston to secure certain contributions of literary matter. There, for the first time, I met Mr. William Dean Howells, then editor of the Atlantic Monthly, – now recognized as the foremost creative and critical writer of America.
In the course of our conversation, Mr. Howells asked me why I should not write my reminiscences of life as a Southern soldier. At that time war passions had only just begun to cool, and so I answered that it would be hardly fair to the publishers of Hearth and Home for me in that way to thrust upon the readers of that periodical the fact that its editor had been a Rebel soldier.
"Oh, I didn't mean," answered Mr. Howells, "that you should write your reminiscences for Hearth and Home. I want you to write them for the Atlantic."
I put the matter aside for a time. I wanted to think of it, and I wanted to consult my friends concerning the propriety of doing what Mr. Howells had suggested. Then it was that I talked with Oliver Johnson, and received from him the advice reported in the preface to the first edition of this book, which is printed on another page.
An arrangement was at once made with Mr. Howells that I should write seven of the nine papers composing the book, for publication in the Atlantic, the two other papers being reserved in order to "give freshness" to the volume when it should appear.