[FN-2] See Appendix A--the well-known scalp-story of Dr. Franklin--long believed, and recently revived and included in several works of authentic history. Such deliberate fictions, for political purposes, as that by Dr. Franklin, just referred to, were probably rare; but the investigations into which the author has been led, in the preparation of the present work, have satisfied him, that from other causes, much of exaggeration and falsehood has obtained a permanent footing in American history. Most historians of that period, English and American, wrote too near the time when the events they were describing occurred, for a dispassionate investigation of truth; and other writers who have succeeded, have too often been content to follow in the beaten track, without incurring the labour of diligent and calm inquiry. Reference has been made above to the affair of Wyoming, concerning which, to this day, the world has been abused with monstrous fictions--with tales of horrors never enacted. The original causes of this historical inaccuracy are very obvious. As already remarked, our histories were written at too early a day; when the authors, or those supplying the materials, had, as it were, but just emerged from the conflict. Their passions had not yet become cooled, and they wrote under feelings and prejudices which could not but influence minds governed even by the best intentions. The crude, verbal reports of the day--tales of hear-say, coloured by fancy and aggravated by fear,--not only found their way into the newspapers, but into the journals of military officers. These, with all the disadvantages incident to flying rumors, increasing in size and enormity with every repetition, were used too often, it is apprehended, without farther examination, as authentic materials for history. Of this class of works was the Military Journal of Dr. James Thatcher, first published in 1823, and immediately recognized as historical authority. Now, so far as the author speaks of events occurring within his own knowledge, and under his own personal observation, the authority is good. None can be better. But the worthy army surgeon did not by any means confine his diary to facts and occurrences of that description. On the contrary, his journal is a general record of incidents and transactions occurring in almost every camp, and at every point of hostilities, as the reports floated from mouth to mouth through the division of the army where the journalist happened to be engaged, or as they reached him through the newspapers. Hence the present author has found the Doctor's journal a very unsafe authority in regard to facts, of which the Doctor was not a spectator or directly cognizant. Even the diligent care of Marshall did not prevent his measurably falling into the same errors, in the first edition of his Life of Washington, with regard to Wyoming; and it was not until more than a quarter of a century afterward, when his late revised