Chapter I: Preface

In the early part of 1863, while I was resident in London,--the first of the War Correspondents to go abroad,--I wrote, at the request of Mr. George Smith, publisher of the Cornhill Magazine, a series of chapters upon the Rebellion, thus introduced:--

"Few wars have been so well chronicled, as that now desolating
America. Its official narratives have been copious; the great
newspapers of the land have been represented in all its campaigns;
private enterprise has classified and illustrated its several
events, and delegates of foreign countries have been allowed to
mingle freely with its soldiery, and to observe and describe its
battles. The pen and the camera have accompanied its bayonets, and
there has not probably been any skirmish, however insignificant,
but a score of zealous scribes have remarked and recorded it.

"I have employed some leisure hours afforded me in Europe, to
detail those parts of the struggle which I witnessed in a civil
capacity. The Sketches which follow are entirely personal, and
dwell less upon routine incidents, plans, and statistics, than upon
those lighter phases of war which fall beneath the dignity of
severe history and are seldom related. I have endeavored to
reproduce not only the adventures, but the impressions of a
novitiate, and I have described not merely the army and its
operations, but the country invaded, and the people who inhabit it.

"The most that I have hoped to do, is so to simplify a campaign
that the reader may realize it as if he had beheld it, travelling
at will, as I did, and with no greater interest than to see how
fields were fought and won."

To those chapters, I have added in this collection, some estimates of American life in Europe, and some European estimates of American life; with my ultimate experiences in the War after my return to my own country. I cannot hope that they will be received with the same favor, either here or abroad, as that which greeted their original publication. But no man ought to let the first four years of his majority slip away unrecorded. I would rather publish a tolerable book now than a possibly good one hereafter.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT,

AND HIS

Romaunt abroad during the War.