On The Blockade   By: Oliver Optic (1822-1897)

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TAKEN BY THE ENEMY WITHIN THE ENEMY'S LINES ON THE BLOCKADE STAND BY THE UNION FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT A VICTORIOUS UNION

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY ON LAND

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BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER IN THE SADDLE A LIEUTENANT AT EIGHTEEN ON THE STAFF AT THE FRONT AN UNDIVIDED UNION

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Lee and Shepard Publishers BOSTON

[Illustration: Mulgrum and the engineer.]

The

BLUE AND THE GRAY

Series

[Illustration]

By Oliver Optic

ON THE BLOCKADE

The Blue and the Gray Series

ON THE BLOCKADE

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 Stories" "The Onward and Upward Series" "The Yacht Club Series" "The Lake Shore Series" "The Riverdale Series" "The Boat Builder Series" "Taken by the Enemy" "Within the Enemy's Lines" etc.

BOSTON

LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers

Copyright, 1890, by Lee and Shepard All rights reserved.

On the Blockade.

To my Son in Law,

SOL SMITH RUSSELL,

of the United States of America, though Residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

who is always "On the Blockade" against Melancholy, "The Blues," and all similar maladies,

This Volume is affectionately dedicated.

PREFACE

"ON THE BLOCKADE" is the third of "The Blue and the Gray Series." Like the first and second volumes, its incidents are dated back to the War of the Rebellion, and located in the midst of its most stirring scenes on the Southern coast, where the naval operations of the United States contributed their full share to the final result.

The writer begs to remind his readers again that he has not felt called upon to invest his story with the dignity of history, or in all cases to mingle fiction with actual historic occurrences. He believes that all the scenes of the story are not only possible, but probable, and that just such events as he has narrated really and frequently occurred in the days of the Rebellion.

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.