In The Ranks: From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House / The War, as Seen and Experienced by a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac

Transcriber's Note
R. E. McBRIDE.
A tale of the times of old. The deeds of days of other years.
—Ossian.

In giving this book to the public we do so under the same plea which justifies those pleasant gatherings called reunions, where men of the same regiment, corps, or army, meet to extend friendly greetings to each other, to friends, and all comrades in arms.
The writer has found it a pleasant task to recall the scenes of fifteen years ago, when, a mere boy in years, he had a part in the events here recorded. He is conscious of a kindly affection toward the men who were his companions during those stirring times. Kindness, thoughtfulness, forbearance, toward the boy-soldier, are not forgotten. If he found any thing different from these in his intercourse with men or officers, it has passed from memory, and he would not recall it if he could.
We trust, also, that this work may have a mission of utility to the generation that has grown up since the war.
There is a certain almost indefinable something, which has been summed up under the expression, military traditions. This comes not alone from formal histories of the wars of the nation, but more largely from the history which each soldier carried home with him after the war was over. It meant something more than a certain amount of small family vanity, when men used to say, My father was a soldier of the Revolution; My father fought at Lundy's Lane.
There lay back of this the stories told to wondering little ones while they gathered around the arm-chair of the soldier grandfather. Here were planted the seeds of military ardor that found expression at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Atlanta, and the Wilderness. It is thus the past of the nation projects itself into the present. Our comrades that sleep down yonder guard their country more effectually than if, full armed, they kept unceasing watch on all her borders. Though dead, they yet speak,—yes live , in the spirit which yet lives in the hearts of their countrymen. The cause they died for our children will love; the institutions they preserved at such cost, our sons will perpetuate by intelligent devotion to freedom and her laws.