Excerpt from Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A The work which I have edited and herewith submit to the public is the diary of an eminent American soldier - Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a grandson of the Revolutionary hero Ethan Allen of Ticonderoga. General Hitchcock died after having been in the army nearly half a century, and he left behind him a vast accumulation of notebooks and other writings describing in minute detail all of our important wars since 1815. He kept a journal during his entire life, in which he made systematic records almost every day and often many times a day - a voluminous chronicle of passing events which has no parallel in the literary remains of any other distinguished American. Though he wrote with grace and fluency he disparaged the value of his manuscript and said, "I keep this diary for my own use and convenience - to jog my memory." A graduate of West Point during its earliest days, he was first an instructor there and afterwards Commandant of the Corps of Cadets of that institution. He was engaged in the Florida wars and removed the last of the Seminoles; in the Mexican War he was first with General Taylor in the north and later General Scott's Inspector-General in the south, - at the right hand of that commander from Vera Cruz to the capital. After the conclusion of peace, while tarrying in New Orleans in 1848, General Hitchcock was vigorously besieged by the participants in the Mexican War, who united in entreating him to write a history of that contest. They knew that he had disapproved of the motives of the administration which began it and yet had been actively present in the battles which effected the conquest of the invaded country - and therefore that he would be likely to be impartial. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.