OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WITH PREFACE BY PROF. HENRY L. WILLIAMS AND WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK MOORE "More solid things do not show the complexion of the Times so well, PREFACE. THIS volume presents a selection from the numerous productions in verse, which appeared during the war of the American Revolution. Many of them are taken from the newspapers and periodical issues of the time; others from original ballad-sheets and broadsides; while some have been received from the recollections of a few surviving soldiers, who heard and sang them amid the trials of the camp and field. Nearly every company had its "smart one or poet, who beguiled the weariness of the march or the encampment by his minstrelsy, grave or gay; and the imperfect fragments which survive to us, provoke our regret that so few of them have been preserved. All that we can claim for the writers of these songs, is a manifest spirit of devotion to the cause, and defiance to its enemies. The poesy of their productions is meager. They did not write for fame; but, in the language of one of the most honest and homely of them, "from a great desire to state the truth, and their opinion of it, in a quiet way, just set their poetical lathes a-turning, and twisted out ballads and songs for the good of the common cause." |