In the last score of years I have often been urged by friends and
sympathizers to bring out as a separate issue my article, The Creed of
the Old South, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1892,
and which attracted wider attention than anything I have ever written.
As this is the jubilee of the great year 1865, the memories of that
distant time come thronging back to the actors in the momentous
struggle, and I am prompted to publish in more accessible form my record
of views and impressions that may seem strange even to the survivors of
the conflict, now rapidly passing away. To this paper I have added an
essay on a cognate theme--A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War--which
was published in the Atlantic Monthly of September, 1897, and which has
been accepted by the eminent historian, Mr. Rhodes, as an historical
document. These specimens of what I call my Sargasso work ("Weeds from
the Atlantic") are reproduced by the kind permission of the Houghton
Mifflin Company. A few slips of pen and type have been corrected, and a
few notes out of the mass of literature evoked by the first essay, or
akin to it, have been added for the benefit of the third generation.
[Illustration: signature of Basil L. Gildersleeve]
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
JUNE, 1915.