In this department the true and correct province of the pen is to encourage, by all honorable means, bravery, magnanimity, and all other generous traits of a great nation, consistent with safety or security in the future, determined to maintain the right, and equally so not to yield anything to wrong through abject fear of consequences; at the same time favoring forbearance and exhausting all honorable means before the last resort of warfare be put in execution; while not forgetting to impress that external warfare or internal rebellion generally leave behind worse evils than those intended to be removed. A little reflection, then, must convince all of the vast and mighty influences which the historian and biographer exercise on society and nations at large, either for good or evil, according to the range or sphere occupied. The life of the condemned criminal, James Copeland, who expiated his blood-stained career on the scaffold, together with the history of the alarming and extensive clan, which, for many long years, produced a perfect reign of terror over such a broad expanse of territory in this nation, and of which said James Copeland formed one of the principal leaders in the clan—clearly showing the causes which favored the progress, as well as the causes which produced dismemberment and final dissolution—such a life and history cannot fail, even at this late date, after so long an interval of unavoidable interruption, of materially interesting and benefitting the public at large. James Copeland was executed in 1857. His life and the history of the clan were published in 1858. The sale of the work was progressing wonderfully when a ruinous prosecution commenced against the author in Mobile, in another State, Alabama, for libel on several parties by the names of Messrs. Overall, Moulton and Cleaveland; the former being the principal actor in this prosecution, at least overtly so. This circumstance, in connection with the crippling of the author’s pecuniary resources, together with the all-absorbing questions involved in the late internal war, through which we have just passed, prevented any but the first edition from appearing, which only circulated in a very limited extent of territory. The obstacles here referred to are now pretty much out of the way. Opportunity is offered for republication on a far broader basis than before. Time is the corrector of errors and excesses. Heated passions give way to sober reason. In the enlarged edition which will shortly appear, impartial minds will at once discover that the principal object is to do justice to all—injury to no one; but this course will not exclude the guilty from exposure, yet it will endeavor to exonerate the innocent who may have been accused through misnomer or by inadvertent mistake.