The claws, the teeth, the instincts, the ears, vision
The answer is <span>oral histories that later were written down.</span>
December 14, 1799 was when George Washington died.
The main point of the excerpt is that readers should be aware of the damage that the war has done to a generation of men who were impacted by it, and read the book with this idea in mind.
The epigraph wants to make sure that readers who approach this book do it with the same purpose as the one with which the author wrote it. He does not want the readers to think of this book as an accusation, a confession or an adventure.
