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MISS LESLIE W. STEVENS....Head of Library Extension Department

MISS CORALIE H. JOHNSTON.

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Bulletin of the Virginia State Library

Edited By H. R. McILWAINE, State Librarian.

Vol. XVI.

JULY, 1927

Nos. 2 and 3

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The General Assembly of 1901-1904, which had the labor of passing the great number of laws necessitated by the adoption of the Constitution of 1902, passed several acts relating to the Virginia State Library. One of these has in it the following section:

"Of the moneys and securities belonging to the library fund now in the hands of the Secretary of the Commonwealth and transferred to the Treasurer, the Library Board is authorized to expend a sum not exceeding the sum of four thousand dollars per annum in editing, arranging and publishing the records pertaining to the history of the Colony and State of Virginia, and to the service of citizens of the State in the wars of the Revolution, of Eighteen Hundred and Twelve, the Mexican War, and the Civil War."

The library fund spoken of in this act has long since been exhausted. Regular biennial appropriations have taken its place. The mandate, however, that the library shall publish material from time to time has remained in force and the Library Board and members of the staff have obeyed it fully. Many publications of importance have been issued in the past twenty-three years. Most of them, however, have had as their subject-matter material bearing on the colonial period of Virginia history. Rather strange to say, no publication of the State Library has in all that time appeared bearing on the Civil War period. This has, of course, not resulted from lack of interest, but from other commitments.

At last the determination has been reached to take away in a measure what may seem to amount even to a reproach. The Library has come into possession of a typewritten copy of an interesting diary of a Virginia soldier in the Civil War or War between the States, to use a somewhat more accurate designation of the great struggle, and one which has become popular in Virginia, though the term "Civil War" is the one used in the statute quoted above. It has also come into possession of a photostat copy of a very rare pamphlet published some years ago by another soldier of the Confederacy. Both are not only interesting but valuable. The present publication of the State Library is devoted to them. Though one of these items has been printed before, it is now rarely met with. Moreover, in the first printing it was very badly handled; advantage has been taken of the reprinting to weed out, it is hoped, most of the typographical errors marring the first edition. The Diary, the first of the two items, the

one now for the first time printed, appears, except for omissions, almost exactly as written.

The Library Board is fortunate in having obtained the consent of Mr. W. W. Scott, the Law Librarian, to write the preface to the present work and to see it through the press. Mr. Scott himself served with distinction in the Army of Northern Virginia, knew General Lee personally in Lexington after the War, and is a high authority on all questions connected with the War.

This piece of work is a labor of love on the part of Mr. Scott, but in it he also adds to the obligations to him under which the writer of this note rests obligations which have been growing steadily for twenty years, the period of this writer's service in the State Library. H. R. McILWAINE, Librarian, Virginia State Library.

Richmond, Va.,
July 12, 1927.

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