Excerpt from Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, Brigadier-General Confederate States Army, Ex-Governor of Louisiana "A man that fortune's buffets and rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks! And bless'd are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger, to sound what stop she please." Hamlet, Act iii., scene 2. "And you ought to take very great care, when you are about to praise or blame any man, that you speak correctly." Plato - The Minos. "But such acts as no poet has yet thrown round them a renown suited to their worth, and which are still in remembrance, all these it seems I ought, by praising, to call to mind, and by introducing them to others, make them a subject for songs and other kinds of poetry, according to the actors." Plato - The Menexens. "For the main point in biography is, to present the man in all his relations to his time, and to show to what extent it may have opposed or prospered his development. What view of mankind and the world he has shaped from it, and how far he himself may be an external reflection of its spirit." Goethe - Wahrheit und Dichtung. 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.