Published in 1904, this is an account of Charles O'Ferrall's service in the Confederate Cavalry through his later years as a judge, U.S. Representative, Governor of Virginia and more. Includes some of the history of the Civil War and the history of the Union.

Excerpt from Forty Years of Active Service: Being Some History of the War Between the Confederacy and the Union and of the Events Leading Up to It, With Reminiscences of the Struggle and Accounts of the Author's Experiences of Four Years From Private to Lieutenant-Colonel and Acting Colonel in The Since my retirement from official life. January the first, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, I have been often and persistently requested by my Confederate comrades and friends in social, business, and official circles to write my reminiscences of my four years' service as a cavalryman in the Army of Northern Virginia under the command respectively of Beauregard, Johnston, Smith, and Lee, and my many years of official life, as a boy court clerk, member of the legislature, judge, member of the House of Representatives, and Governor of the State of Virginia. Conscious of the time and labor such an undertaking would involve and my inability to fully cover the ground over which I would have to travel, I have refrained. But being still strongly urged I have finally yielded, and shall now endeavor as best I can, plainly and without attempt at rhetoric, to put in print some of my recollections of the occurrences, events, and incidents of the years of war and peace I have mentioned, the former necessarily stirring and the latter more or less exciting and thrilling. My pen will not be dipped in the ink of gall, nor tipped with malice or injustice. I shall endeavor to give no offense, and if perchance I should do so it will be, as I think, in the interest of truth. I may make mistakes, for it is human to err, but it will give me infinite pleasure to correct them as soon as they are brought to my attention. I shall endeavor to condense and aim at brevity, leaving much still in the store-house of my memory. Interspersed through the volume will be many stories and anecdotes of both war and official life which may elicit mirth or draw a tear. The whole will be written in the spirit of a fraternal Union of the two sections of our once divided but now reunited land. 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.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is. The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation’s economy. Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950’s contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews. Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.

The Shelf2Life American Civil War Collection is a unique and exciting collection of pre-1923 titles focusing on the American Civil War and the people and events surrounding it. From memoirs and biographies of notable military figures to firsthand accounts of famous battles and in-depth discussions of slavery, this collection is a remarkable opportunity for scholars and historians to rediscover the experience and impact of the Civil War. The volumes contained in the collection were all written within 60 years of the end of the war, which means that most authors had living memory of it and were facing the effects of the war while writing. These firsthand accounts allow the modern reader to more fully understand the culture of both the Union and Confederacy, the politics that governed the escalation and end of the war, the personal experience of life during the Civil War, and the most difficult and polarizing question in the history of the United States: slavery. The American Civil War Collection allows new readers access to the contemporary arguments and accounts surrounding the war, and is a vital new tool in understanding this important and pivotal chapter in American history.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.