If I Should Die To-night
read that poem from the original manuscript in 1867, before a large audience in the courthouse in Jackson. Let’s see: there are some men now living who were there and heard me read it. There were Horace Chapman, now living in Columbus; Arch Mayo, now of Los Angeles; Tom Moore, G. David of Jackson, and others whom I might recall. Ask them.”
We are not insistent upon the claim that Mr. Dungan is the author. We gave him credit because his name has been attached to the poem for forty years. If it is so grand a poem that his authorship may be doubted, why give the claim to Belle Eugenia Smith? Are her credentials any better? If Longfellow’s or Lowell’s name had been attached to the poem no one would have doubted the authorship. Of course it comes natural when a fameless name is accorded the credit to hesitate. We hope the Gallipolis Tribune will pursue the matter further.The Tribune did pursue it, and in the course of time fired a veritable broadside by publishing a letter from Elmer C. Powell, a fellow-Jacksonian of Mr. Dungan, which, as it put it, did not leave the Journal a leg to stand on.
Mr. Powell, who seems to have been of a methodical mind, ranged his proofs in the following order:
1. Of the persons mentioned by Mr. Dungan as having been present when he read his poem before a large and appreciative audience in the Jackson
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