Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin
MATTHEW S. DUDGEON
Secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission
Chairman, Commissioner Estabrook
Secretary and Editor, Carl Russell Fish
Committee on Publications, Commissioners Dudgeon and Fish
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Whatever value this publication may have, lies in the fact that it offers a typical case—a small cross section of the army that freed the slave and saved the Union.
The Editor of the Commission's publications has asked me to state briefly something about myself. I am one of the multitude of "hyphenated" Americans, born across the water but reared under the flag. I am a Cambro-American, proud of both designations, and with abundant heart, loyalty, and perhaps too much head pride in both. Introduced to this world in Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, Wales, November 14, 1843, I celebrated my first anniversary by landing at Castle Garden, in New York City. My parents were sturdy "come-outers" who, after the manner called "heresy", even among Protestants, worshipped the God of their fathers. They came from what in orthodox parlance was known as the "Smwtyn Du" the heretical "black-spot" in Wales. I am the third Jenkin Jones to preach that liberal interpretation of Christianity generally known as Unitarianism. The first Jenkin Jones preached his first heretical sermon in his mother's garden way back in 1726, ninety-three years before Channing preached his Baltimore sermon (1819), from which latter event American Unitarianism generally dates its beginning.