PREFACE

“Defending His Flag” relates the adventures of two boys, or rather young men, during the first campaign of our great Civil War. At the call to arms, one enlists in the infantry of the North while the other throws in his fortunes with the cavalry of the South. Personally the two are warm friends, yet they become bitter foes on the battlefield. One marches to Washington, to defend the Capitol, and the other rides to Manassas, where the Confederates were gathering. Both fight at the bloody battle of Bull Run, and then take part in that stirring Campaign of the Peninsula and before Richmond.

In writing this work I have had but one object in view, and that was to give a faithful picture of a part of the Civil War as seen from both sides of that never-to-be-forgotten conflict. During the war, and for years afterward, grown folk and young people were treated to innumerable books on the conflict, all written either from the Northern or the Southern point of view, thoroughly biased, and calculated to do more harm than good. In some of these bits of ill-advised literature the enemy never gained a victory, the other side simply “falling back to a better point from which to make another attack.”

I think the time has come when the truth, and the whole truth at that, can be told, and when it will do positive good. Since the Spanish-American War, when some of the gallant Southern officers and men made such records for themselves under Old Glory, the old lines have been practically wiped out. The reconstructed South is as firm a part of our Nation as was the old South during the first half of the last century, and it has a perfect right to honor the memories of those who, while wearing the gray and marching under the stars and bars, fought so gallantly for what they considered was right and true.

This story ran as a serial under the title, “In Defence of His Flag,” in that popular monthly, The American Boy. As a serial it created a demand for its publication in book form, hence the present volume. The story has been somewhat revised but not materially altered. The purely historical portions are based on the United States records and the records of the Confederacy.

Once again I thank the thousands and thousands of boys, not only in this country but also in other lands, who take so much interest in what I have written for them. May the present volume please you in every way and do you good.

Edward Stratemeyer.

May 15, 1907.