The historian is forbidden to make his work more palatable or more
interesting by the intermixture of fiction with fact, while the
story-writer, though required to be reasonably consistent with the
spirit and the truth of history, may wander from veritable details, and
use his imagination in the creation of incidents upon which the grand
result is reached. It would not be allowable to make the Rebellion a
success, if the writer so desired, even on the pages of romance; and it
would not be fair or just to ignore the bravery, the self-sacrifice, and
the heroic endurance of the Southern people in a cause they believed to
be holy and patriotic, as almost universally admitted at the present
time, any more than it would be to lose sight of the magnificent spirit,
the heroism, the courage, and the persistence, of the Northern people in
accomplishing what they believed then, and still believe, was a holy and
patriotic duty in the preservation of the Union.
Incidents not inconsistent with the final result, or with the spirit
of the people on either side in the great conflict are of comparatively
little consequence.
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