A word of Explanation.
Nothing can be left out of the proud story now, as nothing can be added to it. Association with valorous deeds ennobles a writer. The author recognizes forcibly how inadequately his pen has worked out the task of comradeship. He has read, with increasing feelings of wonder and admiration, the severely simple official records of his comrades-in-arms during the Confederate war. As the old monks deemed golden ink alone worthy to record holy lives of saints and martyrs, so type of gold should only be used to crystallize so much heroism and self-sacrifice as Louisiana's soldiers showed upon fields by the James, by the Harpeth, by the Teche, and by the banks of our own kingly Mississippi.It is freely admitted that from the limitations imposed by space many omissions have necessarily occurred. The names of many gallant comrades, like obscured stars, do not appear. Yet like those same stars they have shown, even if darkened, in War's studded firmament.
The Louisiana contingent marched over a broad space, never otherwise than honorably. They covered battlefields from Belmont in Missouri to Mobile in Alabama, and from the Carolina coast to the Rio Grande. To write their deeds would call for volumes, not chapters.
No author can feel more personal pride in the record made by Louisiana, or a more unselfish pleasure in recording their achievements. In this personal word, along with other matters, he has tried to make clear to his comrades at once their right to the fairest treatment from him and his earnest effort to accord it.
