PREFACE
The editors' approach to the autobiography was to "translate" the handwriting and to allow Charles Wilkes to speak for himself with a minimum of interference. However, the manuscript's structure and Wilkes' writing style dictated some editorial incursions.
It would seem that quick and divergent thoughts crossed Wilkes' mind as he worked on the autobiography, and he would immediately insert them in the text. This led to wandering digressions and disdain for punctuation and grammatical considerations, particularly sentences. Confronted with strings of phrases, the editors added square bracketed verbs or other links to form sentences, albeit sometimes very long sentences. Square brackets have also been put to other conventional uses to insert missing words and to indicate illegibles or blank spaces in the text. Chapter breaks are non-existent in the manuscript and paragraphs virtually so. They have been supplied by the editors. Footnotes, used to clarify or identify, are kept to a minimum.
Wilkes occasionally had difficulty with the chronological sequence of events. For example, he discussed his command of the West India Squadron before he treated of the James River Flotilla. Actually the time frame for these commands was just the reverse. We have not tampered with his order, but have included a brief chronology which it is hoped will be a reference point for readers.
If Wilkes did not have a fact or specific piece of information at hand he left space in the manuscript, apparently with the intention of returning to fill it in. He did not, and the blanks remained. We have succeeded in supplying the missing data in some instances, but others have defied resolution. There are also pages missing from the manuscript, and where this occurs it has been noted.
Wilkes' rambling prose, a proclivity for flash-backs and flash-forwards, and his desire for saturation coverage, particularly where he conceived that a wrong had been done him, led to the inclusion of some repetitive material in the autobiography. Only in one instance (a story in Chapter VIII) was the repetition deemed so flagrant, an almost verbatim recital of what had been written earlier, did the editors feel compelled to delete. The reader will find the place of deletion indicated.
The Admiral did not carry the autobiography beyond the Civil War years and his vendetta with Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. In a short epilogue we have summarized highlights of his activities from this point until his death.
