Product Overview
This book, published at the beginning of the twentieth century, refutes the common charge made against the South that the protection of the money value of slave property was the cause of the war which the South waged in its defense. It exposes the misrepresentations of authors who write textbooks castigating the South, and recommends that these and such like books be vigorously and universally excluded from all schools and institutions of learning in all the states of the South. This work of defense for the South, begun with such ability by Dr. McGuire (Stonewall Jackson's personal physician) was devolved upon Judge George L. Christian, an honored soldier of the Confederacy, a lawyer of notable ability at the Richmond bar, and a writer of clearness, courage, and strength. Through seven years, from 1900 to 1907, he gave patient and faithful labor to painstaking research and most elaborate preparation of the five papers which are included in this volume. Beginning in 1900 with the right of secession as shown upon the testimony of Northern Statesmen and other authors, Judge Christian discusses in 1901 the war as conducted by the Federal and Confederate armies, again upon the testimony of Northern witnesses. In 1902 he reviews the treatment of prisoners of war, and the history of the exchange of prisoners. In 1907 he reverts to the serious question of where the responsibility rested for bringing on the sectional strife, with all its loss of life and wealth and all the unhappiness it spread over the broad land. One who went himself to battle so promptly and then suffered so much in all the years since, has had the fidelity to truth and the courage of heart to do his duty in the defense of his people and of the generations to come. To these official reports from the History Committee of the Grand Camp of Virginia are added two papers of similar force and value from the pen of Dr. McGuire. One is the magnificent address on Stonewall Jackson, delivered at the V. M. I. in 1897, an appreciation and study of the character and career of Jackson which no one else in the world was so well fitted to make. With this also is the paper of Dr. McGuire on the Wounding and Death of Stonewall Jackson, which has preserved for all time the story of which the author was himself a part and a witness, such a narrative as the great surgeon and friend could only himself give to the world. The publication of these papers had a wide-spread and powerful effect. They not only caused the exclusion of certain books from schools and colleges, and the preparation of truthful history for the use of the young. They corrected the mistaken views of many of our own people, and they went far and wide in every section of the land and to other lands. In large degree they have produced a better understanding of the great issues at stake, and have brought men of fair and large minds to recognize the fundamental justice of the cause of the South and the unselfish patriotism and lofty devotion of the men who filled the ranks, and the high character and great ability of many who led them.
