Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1864, by EDWIN M. STONE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Rhode Island. KNOWLES, ANTHONY & CO., PRINTERS, PREFACE. A long preface is seldom read, and this shall be brief. It is right that the reader should know how the following letters came to be in print. The responsibility of the deed is less with the author than with many partial friends. They were written amid camp scenes and on the march, under circumstances unfavorable to literary composition, and were intended for private perusal alone. Portions of them appeared in the Providence Journal, and were received with a favor alike unexpected and gratifying. Numerous requests having been made that they should be gathered up as a Rhode Island contribution to the history of the War of the Rebellion, the author, with unaffected distrust of himself, has yielded to the judgment of others. At first, he designed to recast his correspondence, and give it the graver form of historic narrative, but time forbidding, he has exscinded unessential portions, added to it from parts "contraband" to the public at their date, and in notes drawn from official and other reliable sources, has given particulars of movements of which he was not an eye-witness. In the introduction is noted some points of great importance, viewed in their relations to subsequent events. In the Appendix will be found sketches of the Rhode Island infantry and cavalry regiments and batteries, besides other information that may hereafter be convenient for reference. The author has labored under the disad 1 vantage of being unable to examine the sheets of his work until after they had passed through the press. Had it been otherwise, he might have pruned with more severity. To General Edward C. Mauran grateful acknowledgments are due, for his courtesy in giving free access to the records of his office. Thanks are also tendered to Hon. John R. Bartlett, Rev. Dr. Barnas Sears, President of Brown University, Colonel William Goddard, Professor William Gammell, Rev. A. H. Clapp, Captain William E. Hamlin, United States Provost Marshal for the First Rhode Island Congressional District, and to officers of the army, for valuable materials furnished. While the aim has been to show the honorable position of the State in an unhappy war, it has also been the design to present a comprehensive view of the consecutive campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, with the fortunes of which several of the Rhode Island regiments and most of the batteries have, for longer or shorter periods, been identified. HEAD-QUARTERS BATTERY C, R, I. L. Artillery, November, 1863; E. W. S. |