_On doit a son pays sa fortune, sa vie, mais avant tout la Verite._
In this Diary I recorded what I heard and saw myself, and what I heard
from others, on whose veracity I can implicitly rely.
I recorded impressions as immediately as I felt them. A life almost
wholly spent in the tempests and among the breakers of our times has
taught me that the first impressions are the purest and the best.
If they ever peruse these pages, my friends and acquaintances will
find therein what, during these horrible national trials, was a
subject of our confidential conversations and discussions, what in
letters and by mouth was a subject of repeated forebodings and
warnings. Perhaps these pages may in some way explain a phenomenon
almost unexampled in history,--that twenty millions of people, brave,
highly intelligent, and mastering all the wealth of modern
civilization, were, if not virtually overpowered, at least so long
kept at bay by about five millions of rebels.