Excerpt from Chronicles From the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864: Experiences, Observations, Interviews and Poems Written in Prison, With Historical Introduction

Time is passing. Those who fought, suffered and survived to save coming generations from consequences worse than war, all of which must have entailed war eventually will follow com rades gone before. Hence, I deem it a highly patriotic duty to place these annals, which it was the lot of but few to record, though many saw and felt, before the public. Here is chronicled what ordinary history has not recorded, and that which all lovers of their country and of mankind should read. Young men and young women without definite facts of prison life, written daily, cannot comprehend the weight of all the perils and privations borne by men who fought for their country in the war for Union and Liberty one and inseparable. Life in Rebel prisons tried men's souls as well as their bodies, showing grand loyalty and sacred devotion to justice and liberty bordering on martyrdom. If the Chronicles teach lessons of patriotism, the principal motive of the writer in publishing them Will have been gratified. If they teach other lessons, so much the better. If they contain literary qualities they may exceed my claims.

Two historical introductions concisely detailing important events leading to the war, and immediately following the election of Abraham Lincoln, precede the Chronicles, the value of which for easy epoch reading, exceeds the price of the book.

That which is dead of the past, cannot be written into life. But there is that in all the past without which the present would be blind, the future blank. The past speaks to the future. Though behind, it is before. Even of its wrongs we learn lessons of truth, of right, of progress. The past links the future to that still beyond, that must evolve out of the past elements for better building and the glory to be. The wrongs of the past forgive their lessons never forget. They are lights on the shore of billowy seas of moral advancement. The soldiers dead live; those living have more to live for, to hope for, to work for. While living, wait not to die. Let there be no straggling in the ranks of the army of freedom. We dwell in the present, our work is not done.

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