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When the thin ranks of the armies of the Southern Confederacy were at last dissolved, the survivors of the great struggle, who had marched and fought so long and so well, went back across unfilled fields and to impoverished homes. Whatever perils they had faced, and whatever losses they had suffered, they had not lost their manhood, and they had not surrendered their self-respect and honor, nor anything of their faith in the right and justice of their cause. With a heroism as true and honorable as that displayed on many fields of battle, they returned to work, without capital and almost without implements, some of them crippled for life, and some in broken health, but unscathed in honor and uncrippled in will. They were again to prove their manhood on more difficult fields; to feed and clothe their women and children, to rebuild their homes and to re-establish government and all the institutions of their civilization.

It was not long before these veterans began to gather in Camps, and with no other than peaceful purposes. They would cheer one another in a cordial comradeship. They would remember their fallen comrades, and bury their dead, and succor the old and dependent, and care for the widow and the orphan. There was no thought of continuing a useless and wasting strife, or of fanning the fires of sectional animosities.

Soon the pen began its useful work. Incident and story were narrated. Memories of camp and field were committed to print, the art preservative. Volume after volume was sent from the press to the library shelf, and into many homes. Materials of history were gathered. The biographies of leaders, statesmen and great soldiers, were written. The President and the Vice-President of the Confederate States gave to the world and to generations to come the great books which tell the story of the causes and purposes of the Confederacy and its appeal to arms. Histories were