Four Years a Scout and Spy / "General Bunker", One of Lieut. General Grant's Most Daring and Successful Scouts, Being a Narrative of ... the Experience of Corporal Ruggles During Four Years' Service as a Scout and Spy for the Federal Army

GENERAL BUNKER.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by E. C. DOWNS, In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court, for the Southern District of Ohio.
TO Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant, Whose undaunted energy, heroic valor, superior generalship, and devotion to his country, have proved him THE RIGHT MAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE, And won for him A WORLD-WIDE FAME; And to the gallant Officers and Soldiers who have nobly assisted in sustaining our glorious nationality by crushing the great rebellion, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

It was with much difficulty that I was induced to give to the public a narrative of my experience as a scout and spy. It was the intense interest with which the people have listened to my narratives, whenever I have related them, and their earnest entreaties to have them published, that have prevailed upon me to do so.
I entered the army from purely patriotic motives. I had no vain ambition to gratify, but simply a desire to sustain and perpetuate the noble institutions that had been purchased by the blood of our fathers. I valued the cause of liberty as well worth all the sacrifice that it might cost to save it. I saw at once that the conflict was to be one involving great principles, and that in the end Truth and Justice must prevail .
The part that I have borne in putting down the great rebellion is the one that naturally fell to me by the force of circumstances, and entirely unsolicited. My relation in the affairs of life seems to have been such as to have just adapted me to that part that fell to my lot to act.
I have, without doubt, been indiscreet at times. Who has not? But the reader must remember that he who goes from the peaceful pursuits of life, for the first time, to engage in the art of war, does so with a lack of experience. Soldiering was not my trade. War is demoralizing in its tendency. This fact, I trust, will very much lessen any feelings of prejudice that may arise, in the course of these narratives, from passages clothed with the rough-and-tumble of army life.