based upon the idea that he regarded himself as the nation's only hope,
forgetting that to a free people no man has ever become indispensable,
however powerful his intellect or exalted his virtues. Barring certain
conclusions which are open to easy controversion, the narrative is
exceedingly careful, graphic, and in the main truthful.

The third volume (1883) is translated and edited by Col. John S.
Nicholson of Philadelphia, and covers the eventful year 1863,--the
operations and movements on the Rapidan and the disaster to the union
arms at Chancellorsville,--the movements upon Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and
the retreat of Lee's array to Virginia. Closer attention is paid, in
this volume, to the legislation, administration, finances, resources,
temper, and condition generally of the North and the South, and valuable
accounts are given of the organization at the North of the signal corps,
the medical and hospital service, the military telegraph, the system of
railroad transportation for military purposes, the soldiers' homes, and
the sanitary and other commissions.

As a whole, and so far as published, the work purports to give an
accurate account of what took place in all quarters of the theatre of
war, and is generally successful. It never errs on the side of
partisanship, but occasionally through ignorance or misapplication of
facts. From first to last, it is an honest and straightforward
narrative, at times eloquent and at times vivacious. The reader is bored
by no flights of rhetoric; but students will always lament a lack of
philosophical tone and _critical_ appreciation of men and events.
The maps and plans, which are numerous and are furnished from official
sources, are all that could be desired.