Page:Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction.djvu/11

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PREFATORY NOTE

OF the essays included in this volume all but one—that on "The Process of Reconstruction" —have been published before during the last eleven years: four in the Political Science Quarterly, one in the Yale Review, and one in the "Papers of the American Historical Association." For the purpose of their present appearance all have been subjected to revision, which has resulted in some cases in considerable modifications. The first five essays are devoted immediately to various phases of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The last two, while not concerned exclusively with those topics, have nevertheless such a relation to the legal and political questions treated as to justify their inclusion in the volume.

To the younger generation of reading men at the present day the military history of the Civil War is familiar or readily accessible; the constitutional and political history is neither. As to the Reconstruction, the term is to most people merely

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