Page:The Southern poems of the war (IA southernpoems00masorich).pdf/11

 In the beginning of the war I conceived the design of collecting and preserving the various War Poems, which born of the excited state of the public mind,) then inundated our newspapers. For a time, I carried out this intention, but a very busy lite soon obliged me to relinquish it; so that I am indebted to the kindness of friends for most of the later Poems in this collection.

Travelling since the war through many portions of the South, I have heard every where the wish expressed, that these Poems should be collected and published in a form so cheap as to be necessible to all. This desire I have endeavored to fulfil.

Besides a "Memorial" volumnie, to preserve these "Bongs," expressive of the hopes and triumphs and sorrows of a "lost canae," I have another design-to aid by its sale the Education of the Daughters of our desslate land; to pt a certain number for Teachers, that they may take to their homes and spread amongst the different Southern States the knowledge of those accomplishments which else may be denied them.

I appeal to all good people to aid me in this effort to provide for the women of the South, (the future mothers of the country.) the timely boon of creation. Many of these children are the orphans of soldiers, from whom they have inherited nothing but an honorable name, and the last hours of more than one of whom I was enabled to soothe by the promise that I would do something for the little ones they left behind them. That promise, I trust, this humble effort may enable me in part to redeem.

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