The first volume of this work was published in 1875, the second in 1876, and the third in 1883.  A fourth volume is now in course of preparation, and will conclude the series.

The prime qualifications of a historian, dispassionateness and thoroughness, are everywhere manifest in the splendid work of the Count of Paris.  His is the first attempt to produce a full and complete history of the civil war, based upon official records both of the North and of the South.  The whole narrative exhibits unsparing and successful research, calm judgment, temperance alike in praise and censure, and an earnest endeavor to deal justly and fairly with both sides of the great conflict and the actors in each.  There are chapters in the work which will always provoke discussion, and some of the author’s conclusions in special instances may be controverted; still, the great merits of the work, as a whole, cannot but be generally and cordially recognized.

The work is distinctly a military history, without, however, ignoring purely civil transactions when an account of them is needed to throw light on the military movements.  The author’s theory, relative to the origin of the war may be stated thus:—­The South saw that, as the North increased in prosperity, it was decreasing, and was losing the balance of power which it had always held since the adoption of the Constitution.  It determined, therefore, to force slavery into the new States and Territories; and, failing in this, it foresaw but two alternatives,—­either to give up the cause as lost, or to initiate a conflict and a satisfactory peace from its opponents.  It chose the latter, and was thwarted.

The first volume treats of the American army, past and present, of Secession, and the events of the war to the Spring of 1862; the second volume continues the narrative of events from Gen. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  The author, in considering the relations of the commanding general to the administration, praises the former and blames the latter; and, in commending the campaign, shows himself a poor master of the art of war, and in some respects an indifferent critic of practical military operations.  The Count of Paris wrote these chapters in 1874.—­twelve years after the events, and with ample testimony at his command.  It is strange that he could not reach the conclusion, then and now commonly held, that McClellan’s treatment of President Lincoln throughout his entire career seems to have been highly insubordinate and apparently based upon the idea that he regarded himself as the nation’s only hope, forgetting that to a free people no man has ever become indispensable, however powerful his intellect or exalted his virtues.  Barring certain conclusions which are open to easy controversion, the narrative is exceedingly careful, graphic, and in the main truthful.