Fighting for the Right

Fighting for the Right, by Oliver Optic

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Title: Fighting for the Right
Author: Oliver Optic
Illustrator: A. B. Shute
Release Date: July 10, 2006 [EBook #18803]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE BLUE AND THE GRAY--AFLOAT
Two colors cloth Emblematic Dies Illustrated Price per volume $1.50
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
Two colors cloth Emblematic Dies Illustrated Price per volume $1.50
BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER IN THE SADDLE A LIEUTENANT AT EIGHTEEN ON THE STAFF AT THE FRONT AN UNDIVIDED UNION
Any Volume Sold Separately
Lee and Shepard Publishers Boston

[Illustration: "Christy seized him by the collar with both hands." Page 75.]

The
BLUE AND THE GRAY
Series
[Illustration]
By Oliver Optic
FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT

The Blue and the Gray Series
FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT
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 Series" "The Onward and Upward Series" "The Yacht-Club Series" "The Lake Shore Series" "The Riverdale Stories" "The Boat-Builder Series" "Taken by the Enemy" "Within the Enemy's Lines" "On the Blockade" "Stand by the Union" "A Missing Million" "A Millionaire at Sixteen" etc., etc., etc.
BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers
Copyright, 1892 by Lee and Shepard All Rights Reserved
Fighting for the Right
Type-Setting and Electrotyping by C. J. Peters & Son, Boston

To
My Grand Nephew
RICHARD LABAN ADAMS
This Book
Is Affectionately Dedicated

PREFACE
"FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT" is the fifth and last but one of "The Blue and the Gray Series." The character of the operations in connection with the war of the Rebellion, and the incidents in which the interest of the young reader will be concentrated, are somewhat different from most of those detailed in the preceding volumes of the series, though they all have the same patriotic tendency, and are carried out with the same devotion to the welfare of the nation as those which deal almost solely in deeds of arms.
Although the soldiers and sailors of the army and navy of the Union won all the honors gained in the field of battle or on the decks of the national ships, and deserved all the laurels they gathered by their skill and bravery in the trying days when the republic was in peril, they were not the only actors in the greatest strife of the nineteenth century. Not all the labor of "saving the Union" was done in the trenches, on the march, on the gun deck of a man-of-war, or in other military and naval operations, though without these the efforts of all others would have been in vain. Thousands of men and women who never "smelled gunpowder," who never heard the booming cannon, or the rattling musketry, who never witnessed a battle on sea or land, but who kept their minds and hearts in touch with the holy cause, labored diligently and faithfully to support and sustain the soldiers and sailors at the front.
If all those who fought no battles are not honored like the leaders and commanders in the loyal cause, if they wear no laurels on their brows, if no monuments are erected to transmit their memory to posterity, if their names and deeds are not recorded in the Valhalla of the redeemed nation, they ought not to be disregarded and ignored. It was not on the field of strife alone in the South that the battle was fought and won. The army and the navy needed a moral, as well as a material support, which was cheerfully rendered by the great army of the people who never buckled on a sword, or shouldered a musket. Their work can not be summed up in deeds, for there was little or nothing that was brilliant and dazzling in their career. They need no monuments; but their work was necessary to the final and glorious result of the most terrible war of modern times.
No apology is necessary for placing the hero of the story and his skilful associate in a position at a distance from the actual field of battle. They were working for the salvation of the Union as effectively as they could have done in the din of the strife. They were "Fighting for the Right," as they understood it, though it is not treason to say,