Acknowledgment

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[Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, by
William Fields, Jr., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District
of Tennessee.]

PREFACE.

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The voluntary effusions of genius are often marked by a vigor and raciness
that do not belong to more formal productions. It would be out of
place here, to investigate the cause of this, which indeed is apparent on
the slightest reflection. It has been our object, in this publication, to rescue
from oblivion, or, at least, to embody in a form suitable for preservation,
those gems of our occasional literature, which it seemed to us desirable
should not be forgotten. Many of the pieces contained in these pages will
be found to possess an historical interest that entitles them to a better fate than
usually awaits the ephemeral channels through which their authors modestly
thought fit to communicate them to the public. The great drama of human
life is filled with scenes and with characters, which, though deemed too
unimportant to figure in the grave pages of history, nevertheless possess a
most vivid interest in their day, and never cease to command the sympathies
of men, however remote in place or time. How many persons and events
must be brought upon the theatre by the rude conflict of wars, that history
does not, and cannot preserve. Our two contests with Great Britain were
as fertile in these as any of the unhappy disputes that have afflicted mankind.
These form what is called the romance of history; and when drawn
by the actors themselves, are scarcely less valuable, certainly not less interesting
than those affairs which have had appropriated to them the name of
History. What can be more moving than to behold how the happiness of
individuals and families, to preserve which is the business and end of government,
is affected by the fierce collislons of masses? Indeed, nothing serves
so well to distinguish an age or a period, as pictures of private life, drawn
as it is influenced by public affairs. Many of these are preserved in this
volume; and besides, here will be found several accounts of important
battles, written by actors in them, or by those to whom actors communicated
the facts, with a force and animation that belong alone to the writings of
participants in the scenes described.

The pieces from Salathiel, tho' fancy sketches, have nevertheless, a title
to be considered as faithful historical pictures, such as a writer of vivid imagination
might be supposed to conceive on beholding the canvass of a
powerful painter.

We have preserved many tales, several of which are of surpassing
interest. That of Lafitte, the Pirate, may challenge comparison with any
that this or any other country has produced. Its main incidents are believed
to be facts; and the kind of life and adventure it portrays, are by no means

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to be looked upon as the creations of fancy, but as consequences of the mad
persecutions with which the ambition of great nations makes them afflict
each other. Bands of pirates and robbers seldom make their appearance
in peaceable times, but are necessarily produced by the unsettling of all
the usual occupations of men, occasioned by public commotions. Should
unhallowed ambition ever sever the bands of the happy union which binds
Americans together as a family of brothers, our country is destined to witness
fiercer depredations of this kind, than are unfolded in the pages of
Mac Farlane. However dissimilar, then, the pieces may be, he who reads
with an observing spirit, will suffer the vivid strokes in the picture of Lafitte,
to heighten the value of the eloquent strains in favor of our Union, from
the patriots whose speeches, on the late crisis in our pubic affairs, our pages
contain.

Such however, is the variety of our work, that it would be impossible to
particularize all that it contains; but we may be permitted to observe, that
while we have endeavored to consult the prepossessions of every class of
readers, we do not wish our work to be considered a vain attempt to
please fastidious tastes, but as a monument that we have feebly attempted to
erect to the memory of those American writers, who, though they have
written little, have written that little well. Of one thing we feel sure, that
if our Miscellany should pass down the stream of time to a remote period,
the historian of our Literature will acknowledge his obligations to us for the
preservation of these first traces of its dawn.