Excerpt from Major-General Hiram G. Berry, His Career as a Contractor, Bank President, Politician, and Major-General of Volunteers, in the Civil War Together With His War Correspondence, Embracing the Period, From Bull Run to Chancellorsville

The biographical articles treating of Major-General Berry, which were prepared by the author and published in the Rockland Courier-Gazette, have met with such flattering reception, crude though they were, that, yielding to my own inclinations and the importunities of the many admirers of General Berry, I now offer, in more enduring form, this life story of Maine's greatest soldier, first subjecting the original sketches to a thorough revision, adding much matter that has since become available, and eliminating many things that would not prove of interest to the general reader.

A great quantity of material for this biography was collected through the energetic and intelligent efforts of the Generals only daughter, the late Lucy Berry Snow, of Brooklyn, New York, whose untimely demise, after a brief illness, I in common with others deeply deplore. I have had occasion to consult and make extracts from the following works, for which I now make acknowledgment, viz.: Eaton's History of Rockland, Thomaston and South Thomaston, Reports of the Adjutant-General of Maine for the years 1857, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies, War of the Rebellion, published by the War Department, DePeyster's Life of Major-General Philip Kearny, Webb's Peninsular Campaign, Doubleday's Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Palfrey's Antietam and Fredericksburg, Report of the Adjutant-General, State of Michigan, 1866, Michigan in the War, by Robertson, De Trobriand's Four Years with the Army of the Potomac, Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and Stines History of the Army of the Potomac. The publishers of the Rockland Courier-Gazette have freely entrusted to me the early files of that paper from 1854 to 1863, and they have proved to be an inexhaustible source of information, of which I have made frequent use.

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