THE CONFEDERATE SECESSION BY THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS MDCCCLXIV The Right of Translation is reserved PREFACE. IN submitting the pages that follow to the judgment of the public, I feel that I am bound to preface them with a few words of apology, both for themselves and for the period of their appearance. They have taken much longer in the writing than would appear at first sight. A practised writer could probably have completed them in a week or ten days. I could under no circumstances have done that; but had there been nothing to hinder, I could, no doubt, have finished them much more quickly than I have done. But a malady which has been upon me for a long time has at length so affected my hand as to make writing always a difficulty, sometimes an impossibility; and I have been |