I beg attention to the article on another score. It shows that the opinions expressed in this book have not been formed in haste. Nearly all of the more important will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the present book will show, I hope, that they have prosperously grown. There are passages in the article, such as those touching the relations of the races, the future of the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing forces of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and also others, which I might now justly claim to have proved prophetic; and I do not believe that a serious misprediction can be found in the entire article. This is, I hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as indicates that even my early studies of the transcendently important theme were not unfruitful. Further, the article serves in some sort to mark a definite stage in evolution. To give but one illustration: Although my close attention to planting interests at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years had kept me closely watching the negro, I had not then discovered even the beginning of that division of the race into two classes which is now so plain to me. Possibly some readers may shy away from my book, deeming that its subject is hackneyed and worn out. They will exclaim, What can this author say that has not been said in the vast library of books already written upon the civil war? This will be asked, I am sure, only by the unobservant and unreflecting. If one but turn away from the assumptions, dogmas, and philippics, with which north and south cannonaded each other's morality with increasing fury from 1831 to 1861, to the _rerum causæ_, the play of resistless social forces, and the other actualities and great things indicated above, their huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, and wisdom will greatly embarass him--as has been my painful experience--both in making the best selection and in his felt inability to give what he does at last select its fit presentation. As illustration I will say that every thoroughly impartial northern reader who meditates what I narrate as to Toombs will, I believe, be astonished to learn that one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and supreme genius, and who was of unexampled success in doing all the common and all the extraordinary duties of high place, has become worse than forgotten in almost his own day; and such a reader will suspect, as I do myself, that there is much more of value in his career that I have overlooked.