The editor of these volumes makes grateful acknowledgment of the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Harper & Brothers, Ticknor & Co., and D. Lothrop & Co., in freely permitting him to make use of poems of which they own the copyright, and of their other good offices. He feels himself indebted also to the living authors of many poems here presented, for their readiness in consenting to the use of their writings, and for the care that many of them have taken to furnish him with correct versions of poems commonly printed in inaccurate forms. He is under special obligations in this regard to General Albert Pike, who has furnished a transcript, from his own copy of a rare, privately printed volume, of the stirring ballad "Buena Vista," for which a vain search had been made. [Illustration] PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION. In the preparation of these volumes there has been no attempt at completeness. The literature from which the materials are drawn is much too vast to be compressed into two little volumes like these. The aim has been simply to make the collection fairly representative in character, and to include in it those pieces relating to our several wars which best reflect the spirit of the times that produced them. The work of selection in such a case must always be difficult and the result more or less unsatisfactory. There are many reasons for this, some of which no one who has not undertaken a task of this kind can fully appreciate. There is no fixed standard of judgment by which to make a certainly just comparative estimate of the quality of several poems, some of which must be taken and the others left. Merit, in the case of war poems, is the composite result of so many different things that no criticism can hope to make an entirely satisfactory qualitative analysis of such literature. The poetic quality of some pieces entitles them to editorial acceptance, quite irrespective of other considerations, while there are other pieces having very little poetic quality, or none at all, whose claim to consideration on other grounds is incontestable. Mr. Stedman's "Wanted--A Man," Mr. William Winter's exquisitely tender poem "After All," Miss Osgood's "Driving Home the Cows," and Mr. George Parsons Lathrop's "Keenan's Charge," may serve as examples of pieces which no editor with the least capacity of poetic appreciation would hesitate to include in such a collection on the ground of merit even if their character were somewhat at variance, as in this case it is not, with the scheme of the collection. On the other hand there are such things as "Three Hundred Thousand More," several of the rude songs of the war of 1812, and many other pieces, which make equally imperative claims to favor on grounds that have no relation to the question of poetic merit.