Excerpt from The Confederate Spy: A Story of the War of 1861 It is with extreme diffidence that the author of the following pages ventures before the intelligent public in the character of a velist. Whoever writes any thing in these days, when the press is already teeming with ephemeral literature, must suppose that the effusions of his mind are above the thousands that come forth every hour. But the author of this unpretending little volume has too much modesty to lay claim to any such superior excellence, especially in a first effort. He does t publish the book with the humble hope that it will rank with even the ordinary works of mediocrists in the world of romance. The author has only one object in view. He submits the book to the judgment of the patriotic southern public, with the hope that it may help to supplant the poisous rthern literature which has for so many years flooded the South, and villified the southern people and their institutions. The time has w come when there ought to be a change. The South must have a literature of her own. If we could t gain our political, let us establish at least our mental independence. We appeal, therefore, to the southern people; to their dignity; to their sense of justice to themselves; and we ask them longer to encourage the yellow and the red-hacked trash of the North, in which the attempt is made to hold up the South as the butt of the civilized world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.