Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/18

x and able report which is the first paper of the collection made in this volume. It 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 defence. It exposes the misrepresentations of Mr. John Fiske and other authors, 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 defence for the South, begun with such ability by Dr. McGuire, 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 1903 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 defence 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