Charles Carleton Coffin

C. Carleton Coffin.

Charles Carleton Coffin

War Correspondent, Traveller,
Author, and Statesman

By

William Elliot Griffis, D. D.

Author of "Matthew Calbraith Perry," "Sir William Johnson,"
and "Townsend Harris, First American Envoy to Japan."

Boston
Estes and Lauriat
1898

Copyright, 1898 By Sallie R. Coffin

Colonial Press.
Electrotyped and Printed by
C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A.

Dedicated to
The Generation of Young People whom
Carleton
Helped to Educate for American Citizenship.

Preface

Among the million or more readers of "Carleton's" books, are some who will enjoy knowing about him as boy and man. Between condensed autobiography and biography, we have here, let us hope, a binocular, which will yield to the eye a stereoscopic picture, having the solidity and relief of ordinary vision.

Two facts may make one preface. Mrs. Coffin requested me, in a letter dated May 10, 1896, to outline the life and work of her late husband. "Because," said she, "you write in a condensed way that would please Mr. Coffin, and because you could see into Mr. Coffin's motives of life."

With such leisure and ability as one in the active pastorate, who preaches steadily to "town and gown" in a university town, could command, I have cut a cameo rather than chiselled a bust or statue. Many good friends, especially Dr. Edmund Carleton and Rev. H. A. Bridgman, have helped me. To them I herewith return warm thanks.

W. E. G.

Ithaca, N. Y., May 24, 1898.

Contents

• CHAPTER PAGE
  
• I. Introductory Chapter. 13
  
• II. Of Revolutionary Sires. 19
  
• III. The Days of Homespun. 30
  
• IV. Politics, Travel, and Business. 41
  
• V. Electricity and Journalism. 55
  
• VI. The Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. 66
  
• VII. The War Correspondent. 79
  
• VIII. With the Army of the Potomac. 95
  
• IX. Ho, for the Gunboats, Ho! 107
  
• X. At Antietam and Fredericksburg. 119
  
• XI. The Ironclads off Charleston. 132
  
• XII. Gettysburg: High Tide and Ebb. 141
  
• XIII. The Battles in the Wilderness. 151
  
• XIV. Camp Life and News-gathering. 162
  
• XV. "The Old Flag Waves over Sumter". 175
  
• XVI. With Lincoln in Richmond. 183
  
• XVII. The Glories of Europe. 189
  
• XVIII. Through Oriental