manuscripts many years
before at her grandmother's, Lady Dacre's, at the Hoo.

This accusation of having "cooked up" my journal for a particular
end may perhaps have originated from the fact that I refused to
place the whole of it in the hands of the printers, giving out to be
printed merely such portions as I chose to submit to their
inspection, which, as the book was my personal diary, and contained
matter of the most strictly private nature, was not perhaps
unreasonable. The republication of this book in America had not been
contemplated by me; my purpose and my desire being to make the facts
it contained known in England. In the United States, by the year
1862, abundant miserable testimony of the same nature needed no
confirmation of mine. My friend, Mr. John Forbes, of Boston,
however, requested me to let him have it republished in America, and
I very gladly consented to do so.[4]

[4] I have omitted from the letters written on the plantation,
at the same time as this diary, all details of the condition of
the slaves among whom I was living; the painful effect of which
upon myself however, together with my general strong feeling
upon the subject of slavery, I have not entirely
suppressed--because I do not think it well that all record
should be obliterated of the nature of the terrible curse from
which God in His mercy has delivered English America.

In countless thousands of lamentable graves the bitter wrong
lies buried--atoned for by a four-years' fratricidal war: the
beautiful Southern land is lifting its head from the disgrace of
slavery and the agony of its defense. May its free future days
surpass in prosperity (as they surely will a thousand-fold)
those of its former perilous pride of privilege--of race
supremacy and subjugation.

An extremely interesting and clever book, called "A Fool's Errand,"
embodies under the form of a novel, an accurate picture of the
social condition of the Southern States after the war--a condition
so replete with elements of danger and difficulty, that the highest
virtue and the deepest wisdom could hardly have coped successfully
with them; and from a heart-breaking and perhaps unsuccessful
struggle with which, Abraham Lincoln's murder delivered him, I
believe, as a rewar