George Alfred Townsend
Published: 2015-07-04
Total Pages: 582
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Excerpt from Katy of Catoctin or the Chain-Breakers: A National Romance From the hour the author stood by the dead face of Abraham Lincoln, in the Executive Mansion at Washington, he has had the idea of writing a romance upon the conspiracy of Booth. Like many such literary projects nursed by a journalist, this one had not only to be postponed, but finally to become a portion of a broader story, because too many of the actors in the tragedy still lived, and the mere crime presented no elevated moral to justify its embellishment. Considering it, however, as one of a series of cumulative acts of violence committed upon or from the soil of Maryland during the conflict of Emancipation, the author felt not only an epic propriety to be in the theme, but it appealed to him as a descendant of Marylanders and one who had already, in his romance of "The Entailed Hat," pictured the twin lobe of Maryland and the rise of the slave interest. The temptation to paint the more picturesque Western Shore, from the old Catholic tide-water counties and the metropolitan life of Washington and Baltimore to the German valleys and the mountain battle-fields, was not to be dismissed, either by the sacrifice it would require, or from the delicacy of a generation still alive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.