Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/431

Rh fully, wagons and all, and then double-quicked to keep from freezing; our clothes freezing stiff on us as we came out of the water.

We had now the inside track of our pursuers, and leaving them waiting for us to march up one of the many roads they had so well guarded, made our way back towards our lines, which we reached safely without loss of a man, wagon or mule.

The results accomplished by this expedition were nothing, but I have thought it worthy of a place in history, because of the effort. Of the hardships of such a trip only those who have experienced them can judge, and I will not even attempt to paint those we encountered. Our flag waved in the James river two months after the events I have endeavored to describe, but of the hundred and one men who composed this expedition, fully seventy-five were in the Naval Hospital, in Richmond, suffering from the effects of their Winter march, on the sad day on which we turned our backs upon that city.

Is the "Eclectic History of the United States," Written by Miss Thalheimer, and Published by Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., Cincinnatti, a Fit Book to be Used in our Schools?

A review by

We were noticing in our last the tone and general spirit of this book, and will now add several examples to those then given:

II. Designating the Northern States (page 308) as the loyal States—stating (page 309) that more than two-thirds of the States ratified the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery, and on page 324 that all of the States adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, annulled their ordinances of secession, and repudiated the Confederate war-debts without giving the slightest intimation that the Southern States acted in this matter as much under "duress " as the traveller who yields to the highwayman's demand, "your money or your life," the statement (page 313) that Mr. Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, "fairly stated the positions of the two parties in the civil war," and the statement on page 330, that the South was restored in the early part of 1870 "to all of her abandoned rights"— these and other similar statements are specimens of the partisan animus which runs through the whole book, and renders it utterly unfit for use in Southern schools.