womanly endurance.

W.G.S.




Preface.



Several considerations have prompted the editor of this volume in the
compilation of its pages. It constitutes a contribution to the national
literature which is assumed to be not unworthy of it, and which is
otherwise valuable as illustrating the degree of mental and art
development which has been made, in a large section of the country, under
circumstances greatly calculated to stimulate talent and provoke
expression, through the higher utterances of passion and imagination.
Though sectional in its character, and indicative of a temper and a
feeling which were in conflict with nationality, yet, now that the States
of the Union have been resolved into one nation, this collection is
essentially as much the property of the whole as are the captured cannon
which were employed against it during the progress of the late war. It
belongs to the national literature, and will hereafter be regarded as
constituting a proper part of it, just as legitimately to be recognized by
the nation as are the rival ballads of the cavaliers and roundheads, by
the English, in the great civil conflict of their country.

The emotional literature of a people is as necessary to the philosophical
historian as the mere details of events in the progress of a nation. This