 | The Conflict for Civil Rights |  |
PREFACE.
The conflict for civil rights, is a poem which I composed at Savannah, Georgia, in the year 1874, when that question was agitating the entire country, and public sentiment upon the same was so intense, pro and con, there may be some expressions in it which will not be relished by every class of readers. Such readers I trust will be more lenient when I inform them that I wrote under the pressure of the excitement of the times, and was naturally inspired by the heated circumstances.
I have been urged to publish it for years, but knowing that it was necessarily defective, for the reason that I am not a poet, I hesitated to face the criticism the defects might evoke. But as I soon shall depart to the chambers of the dead, and will not long remain to brook the dissecting knife of the critic, I yield to the desire of others, and send it forth in the hope that some line in it may transmit a valuable thought to some struggling soul in want of an idea. Should it only serve to prompt some young lady or gentleman to produce a decent poem on the same subject I will be amply remunerated; for this feeble effort scarcely touches the grandeur of the theme.
| The Conflict for Civil Rights | |