In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional
prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have
neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction.
Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of
poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an
artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the
earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and
feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and
Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive
the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm
signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart,
forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful
word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might
have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the
Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If
their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of
Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed.
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