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Lee and Shepard Publishers Boston
The Blue and the Gray Series
STAND BY THE UNION
BY
OLIVER OPTIC
AUTHOR OF "THE ARMY AND NAVY SERIES" "YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD" "THE GREAT WESTERN SERIES" "THE WOODVILLE STORIES" "THE STARRY FLAG SERIES" "THE BOAT-CLUB SERIES" "THE ONWARD AND UPWARD SERIES" "THE YACHT-CLUB SERIES" "THE LAKE SHORE SERIES" "THE RIVERDALE STORIES" "THE BOAT-BUILDER SERIES" "TAKEN BY THE ENEMY" "WITHIN THE ENEMY'S LINES" "ON THE BLOCKADE" ETC.
BOSTON 1896
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET NEXT "THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE."
Copyright, 1891, by Lee and Shepard.
All rights reserved.
STAND BY THE UNION.
TO
MY TWO YOUNG FRIENDS,
Miss Helen Campbell Smith
AND
Miss Anna Rockwell Smith,
THE DAUGHTERS OF
MY FRIEND MR. GEORGE A. SMITH
OF BOSTON,
This Volume
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
PREFACE
"Stand by the Union" is the fourth of "The Blue and Gray Series." As in the preceding volumes of the series, the incidents of the story are located in the midst of the war of the Rebellion, now dating back nearly thirty years, or before any of my younger readers were born. To those who lived two days in one through that eventful and anxious period, sometimes trembling for the fate of the nation, but always sustained by the faith and the hope through which the final victory was won, it seems hardly possible that so many years have flowed into the vast ocean of the past since that terrible conflict was raging over so large a portion of our now united country.
Though it is said that the South "robbed the cradle and the grave" to recruit the armies of the Confederacy, it is as true that young and old in the North went forth in their zeal to "Stand by the Union," and that many and many a young soldier and sailor who had not yet seen twenty summers endured the hardships of the camp and the march, the broiling suns, and the wasting maladies of semi-tropical seas, fought bravely and nobly for the unity of the land they loved, and that thousands of them sleep their last sleep in unmarked graves on the sea and the land. The writer can remember whole companies, of which nearly half of the number could be classed as mere boys. These boys of eighteen to twenty, who survived the rain of bullets, shot, and shell, and the hardly less fatal assaults of disease, are the middle-aged men of to-day, and every one of them has a thrilling story to tell. The boys of to-day read with interest the narratives of the boys of thirty years ago, and listen with their blood deeply stirred to the recital of the veteran of forty-five years, or even younger, who brought back to his home only one arm or one leg.
