Note 297 — PART II
Reading edition
Published in the Freeman's Journal, October 17, 1787, introduced as follows:
"Mr. Bailey, The subsequent lines were written two or three years after the event that occasioned them, but have never been printed. If you think them in any degree worthy of the memory of the patriotic young officer they attempt to celebrate (and whose death has been so deeply regretted throughout America) I must request you to insert them in your Journal. A. B."
The 1788 edition prints the poem with this title: "To the Memory of the brave, accomplished and patriotic Col. John Laurens, Who in the 27th year of his age, was killed in an engagement with a detachment of the British from Charleston, near the river Cambahee, in South Carolina, August 1782." The text follows the edition of 1809.