Excerpt from Scouts, Spies and Heroes of the Great Civil War: How They Lived, Fought and Died for the Union; Including Thrilling Adventures, Daring Deeds, Heroic Exploits, Exciting Experiences, Wonderful Escapes of Spies, Scouts and Detectives

This book, friendly reader, was not created; like Topsy, it growed. The author or compiler, whichever term you may choose to give him, had for four years past been a not uninter ested observer of the great struggle, which it had been his' duty elsewhere to chronicle. In his researches into the causes and events of the war, its fearful battles, its alternations of light and shadow, its changes of policy, and its final and glorious triumphs, he had had abundant occasion to notice those personal achieve ments, those noble sacrifices, and that fearless devotion to the national cause which have so greatly distinguished this conflict In the pages of a history of the war, such narratives and incidents could find no place; vet it seemed unjust to the great souls who had laid every thing upon their country's altar, with out a murmur or a sigh, that their glorious sacrifices anould not be held in grateful remembrance; and it was from the desire to do some justice to their memory, that at an early day the writer commenced, at first for his own private read ing merely, the collection of narratives and incidents of per sonal adventure and sacrifice in the war. Some of these were found in print, in books, periodicals, and newspapers; Others were preserved in the annals or reports of charitable institu tions, like the Sanitary and Christian Commissions; a few had fimnd record from a poet's pen, and a considerable number8 preface.

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