Ebook Men and Times of the Revolution

This part of it received his careful revision. My labors were, at that point, arrested by feeble health; but, at his decease, all his literary papers were confided to me, as his literary executor.

In arranging the narrative of personal incidents, and the correspondence, for publication, I have felt constrained to withhold much of a private and confidential character, although it possesses peculiar intrinsic value and interest. I have been deeply solicitous to avoid not only all appearance, but to escape every suspicion of having violated, in any instance, the sanctity of friendship, or of having exposed to the public eye the frank and unguarded communications of confidential intercourse.

A remarkable prescience will often be observed in the writings of my father, when results and effects will appear to have been anticipated with singular sagacity, from existing causes. Many other coincidences of a still more striking character, I have omitted, from an apprehension that the idea might be suggested, that the speculations had been recorded after the events occurred, which they profess to foreshadow.

The extraordinary and perilous journey of my father, at the crisis of the Revolution, from Massachusetts to Georgia; his subsequent expedition from New England to North Carolina, soon after its termination; his travels, at a later period, in newly occupied territories; and his explorations of districts, almost in their primeval condition, opened to him ample fields of observation and reflection. His journals reflect, during these events, his daily impressions, formed by occurrences as they took place. They contain a critical exhibition of the state of the country, the aspect of society, the modes of intercourse, the existing prospects, the population and condition of cities and villages, the industrial pursuits, the commerce and internal communications of the country, recorded at the time, and from personal inspection. I think, that no similar memorial of that period exists.

Presuming that these features of his works would be regarded with interest by the American people, I have preserved them with considerable minuteness.