Maurice Thompson, poet, novelist, and journalist (brother of Will
Henry Thompson,--see “High Tide at Gettysburg” and “The Bond of
Blood”), was born in Fairfield, Indiana, September 9, 1844. His
boyhood was passed in Kentucky and Georgia, and he served in the
Confederate army throughout the Civil War, later engaging in the
practice of law at Crawfordsville, Indiana, his present home. He
was at one time the state geologist of Indiana. Mr. Thompson is a
nature-intimate, and his lyrics of “wild life” have a rare
freshness and charm.
Of “An Incident of War” the author says: “The poem has no exact model of
fact; I got it out of my composite impression of war as I experienced
it.”