Excerpt from Ante Bellum: Southern Life as It Was A ssnsaous enemy will forgive us for taking a retrospective view of scenes that in a few years will fade from our memories; and although they may consider these home pictures too highly colored by a prejudiced hand, you, my friends, will recognize the accuracy of the drawing, and cast with me one last, fond, lingering look on our Southern homes as they existed before the red hand of war made them desolate. If the sentiments expressed in these pages should give offense to any, it must be remem bered that they only indicate in a slight degree that feeling which helped to bring about the long and bloody war; and as it was my desire to adhere strictly to facts, I have been compelled to slightly introduce a trite subject. With the hope that these truthful sketches of Southern life may divert for a brief season your thoughts from the dull monotony of the present gloomy state of our country, as they have mine, I cast forth upon the uncertain billows this frail bark freighted with delightful memories of the happy past. 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 technology 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.