INTRODUCTION 



IN preparing this sketch of the life of President Goodell 

 it has been the author's aim to make it as far as possible 

 autobiographical. The letters written during the Civil 

 War are a soldier's letters, written by camp-fires, amid the 

 confusion of army life, and sometimes with the booming of 

 great guns ringing in his ears. They are printed as he left 

 them, without correction, omitting personal and family 

 matters of no interest to the public. The letters are some- 

 times arranged so as to appear like a diary, but he did not 

 keep a diary. He wrote to his friends of what was going 

 on around him; he has very little to say of matters that did 

 not come under his personal observation. 



President Goodell was very careless about his manu- 

 scripts and seems to have looked upon them as of tempo- 

 rary value; and except the addresses and papers which 

 found their way into print, only a few out of many have 

 been preserved. Those printed in this volume are se- 

 lected as illustrative of the tone of his mind and his method 

 of handling the subjects he studied. It will be pleasing to 

 those to whom they were addressed to read his farewells 

 to the graduating classes. 



It will be impossible to mention all the friends who have 

 contributed to this story. It is sufficient to say that Mrs. 

 Helen E. Goodell has been untiring in collecting material 

 illustrative of the work and character of her husband. 

 The sons of the late Colonel Mason W. Tyler of Plamfield, 



