Lemuel Sawyer

Autobiography of Lemuel Sawyer: Formerly Member of Congress from North Carolina

Publisher Marketing: IT is due to the reader, to assure him that no ingredient of vanity has entered into the publication of this trifle. I never imagined my own life of sufficient notoriety and consequence to entitle it to the especial favor of the public, in the shape of a separate and independent chronicle. I had prepared an enlarged and improved volume of the Life of JOHN RANDOLPH, and intended to prefix to the second edition, a brief account of my own. In composing it, I found it grew on my hands, and although "curtailed of many of its proportions" yet it threatened to intrude too far upon the prohibited grounds of the main work. The intended edition is a heavy and expensive undertaking, and I have postponed it to a more convenient season. In the mean time I have been advised by a friend, in whose judgment I place implicit confidence, to advance this pamphlet into the world as a precursor, instead of an accompaniment of that projected work. Should I be fortunate enough to receive the countenance of this enlightened community, it will afford an encouraging presage of its success, and expedite its future appearance. Should it fail, it will at least afford a salutary admonition to withdraw it altogether.