The Southern War Poetry of the Civil War

BY

ESTHER PARKER ELLINGER

Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania, May 1918, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 1918

Copyright, 1918
Esther Parker Ellinger

THE HERSHEY PRESS
HERSHEY, PA.

FOREWORD

In the assembling of material so widely scattered and so long unsought either by students or by collectors, it has been necessary for me to depend in some measure on the efforts of others who have been most generous with their help and assistance. I desire to record my gratitude especially to my Father and my Mother, without whose unfailing sympathy and co-operation this work could not have been done: and to Mrs. C. Francis Osborne of Philadelphia, Miss Sallie Shepherd of Norfolk, Virginia, and Miss Florence D. Johnston of Philadelphia, for books and individual poems. For their courtesy in allowing me free access to the collections committed to their charge I must acknowledge further indebtedness to Mr. Wallace H. Cathcart, Vice-President and Director of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, whose splendid collection of Civil War items contains many rare and important imprints and broadsides: and to Mr. Bunford Samuel, of the Ridgway Branch of the Library Company of Philadelphia, to whose private collection I am indebted for several poems which I have not found elsewhere.

Particularly to Dr. Arthur Hobson Quinn of the University of Pennsylvania, under whose direction this thesis was written, I wish to acknowledge my obligation and to express my sincere appreciation for his guidance and advice.

E. P. E.

University of Pennsylvania, 15 April, 1918.

“Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale: and like a whale, feeds on the littlest things—small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden golden evenings—and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.”

Dunsany—“The Raft Builders.”

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

The Significance of the Southern War Poetry

“The emotional literature of a people,” wrote one of the greatest of the Southern poets, William Gilmore Simms,[1] “is as necessary to the philosophic historian as the mere detail of events in the progress of a nation.... The mere facts in a history do not always or often indicate the true animus of the action. But in poetry and song the emotional nature is apt to declare itself without reserve ... speaking out with a passion which disdains subterfuge, and through media of imagination and fancy, which are not only without reserve, but which are too coercive in their own nature, too arbitrary in their own influence, to acknowledge any restraint upon that expression which glows or weeps with emotions that gush freshly and freely from the heart.”

Edmund Clarence Stedman[2] put the matter a little differently. Asking what may constitute the significance of any body of rhythmical literature, restricted to its own territory, he answered the question thus: “Undoubtedly and first of all, the essential quality of its material as poetry; next to this, its quality as an expression and interpretation of the time itself. In many an era, the second factor may afford a surer means of estimate than the first, inasmuch as the purely literary result may be nothing rarer than the world already has possessed, nor greatly differing from it: nevertheless it may be the voice of a time, of a generation, of a people ... all of extraordinary import to the world’s future.”

“Our own poetry,” he continues elsewhere,[3] “excels as a recognizable voice in utterance of the emotions of a people. The storm and stress of youth have been upon us, and the nation has not lacked its lyric cry.... One who underrates the significance of our literature, prose or verse, as both the expression and the stimulant of national feeling, as of import in the past and to the future of America, is deficient in that critical insight which can judge even of its own day unwarped by personal taste or deference to public impression. He shuts his eyes to the fact that at times, notably throughout the years resulting in the Civil War, this literature has been a ‘force.’”

That the poetry written in the Confederate States during the days of the Civil War was a “force” in potency second only to the army in the field, is a fact that has been too long unnoticed by commentators on the literature of our country. In the rare cases when its influence was recognized, its quality has been mistaken, its character misunderstood, its quantity and volume under-estimated. Due perhaps in part to the intensity of feeling engendered between victors and vanquished in the Lost Cause, the darkness of the days following the close of the war effectively hid from view and kept from national circulation the verses and songs which the war had produced in the South. This was the primary cause which prevented them from attaining the universal and critical appreciation of their value that was the right of so large and important a movement in the history of American letters. The ruin of the South financially and economically, prevented her from calling attention to her own achievement: while the widespread destruction and dispersal of property, as well as the necessarily ephemeral nature of many of her publications, offers not the least satisfactory explanation for the comparative restriction of Southern Civil War verse to the land whence it sprang.

If, however, to the modern critic these poems and songs are comparatively unknown, by the Southerner of Civil War days their value was understood and appreciated to the full. Within a year after war broke out, early in the days of ’62, at least two definite attempts to assemble the fast multiplying verses and songs were being made, the first[4] by Professor Chase and John R. Thompson of Richmond, editor of the Southern Field and Fireside; the second by “Bohemian,” Mr. W. G. Shepperson, who was a correspondent for the Richmond Despatch. The latter effort resulted, in the spring of ’62, in a volume of “War Songs of the South,” containing some one hundred and eight poems, and with the following significant words in the Preface:

“Written contemporaneously with the achievements which they celebrate, [these poems] possess all the vitality and force of the testimony of eye-witnesses to a glorious combat, or even of actors in it. The spontaneous outburst of popular feeling, they give the lie to the assertion of our enemy that this revolution is the work of politicians and party leaders alone.

“Through the Poets’ Corner in the newspaper, they have sped their flight from and to the heart and mind of the people. They showed which way the wind was blowing when the war arose ‘a little cloud like a man’s hand,’ and black as the heavens may now appear, they bravely sing above the storm, soaring so high that their wings are brightened by the sun behind the clouds.

“They cannot fail to challenge the attention of the philosophic historian by their origin, and their influence.... In every age, martial songs have wrought wonders in struggles for national independence.

“And surely these newspaper waifs have played no unimportant part in the actual drama which surrounds us....

“A single volume of ordinary size cannot contain a tithe of the songs which have already appeared, and are daily appearing. This, however, offers enough to show that during the present eventful period, what was said of the early Spaniard is true of the Southron: ‘He has been unconsciously surrounding history with the light of imagination, linking great names with great deeds, concentrating those universal recollections in which everyone feels he has a part, and silently building up the fabric of national poetry on the basis of national enthusiasm.’”

Fifty years later another Southerner, William Malone Baskerville,[5] wrote this: “A young Marylander, a stripling just from college, was dreaming dreams from which he was awakened by the guns of Sumter. One sleepless night in April, 1861, he wrote the poem, ‘My Maryland,’ which may not inaptly be called the first note of the new Southern literature ... ‘new in strength, new in depth, new in the largest elements of beauty and truth.’ He that had ears to hear might have heard in the booming of those guns not only the signal for a gigantic contest, but also the proclamation of the passing away of the old order, and along with it the waxflowery, amateurish and sentimental race of Southern writers.” The passing of this school, of course, meant the passing of what usually has been recognized as the typical literary mode of the South. It meant, however, much more than this: for the changing order was made possible only by the passing of the particular type of civilization that had fostered it, and this, in its turn indicated a complete and thorough renaissance not only of life and letters, but also of Southern soul and spirit.

The type of civilization that endured in the South, to the days of the Civil War, was one of the most picturesque periods of society that can be imagined, but not one that induced or encouraged serious literature. In the North, on the other hand, where there were to be found many large cities as centres of population, and the great national colleges, literature had developed with the people. The earliest settlers of New England had been of a religious, thoughtful, and philosophical disposition, and their manners and mode of life had served to strengthen these tendencies in their descendants. Even the climate of the country had a marked influence in emphasizing New England’s bent towards literature. Rigorous winters and inclement temperatures led to long enforced periods of indoor life, conducive to study and reflection. The effort and stress required to wring a living from the stubborn soil made them an active and a vigorous people. At the same time the comparatively small size of their territory, the number of their towns and cities and the ease of travel over the hard and rocky roads brought them much in contact with each other, and insured communication of thought. Theirs was a civilization founded on civil ties. Farms were small, cultivated usually by the family of the owners, with a few “hired help,” and centered about the smaller villages and townships, which in their turn were satellites of the towns. The towns, again, clustered around the cities, which were thus as hubs in the wheels of society. The rising individual graduated from the town to the city, where were gathered the leading spirits and forces of the day. From the cities back to the smaller communities returned the great newspapers and magazines, whose spiritual and mental authority went unchallenged, and which served the more to amalgamate into a living thoughtful whole the inhabitants of the farthest corner of the countryside. For everyone life was hard and plain; and there followed the accepted corollary of high and resolute thought.

In the South, the thought unquestionably was as grave and lofty. It was, however, neither in the hands of the people, as a whole, nor so thoroughly co-ordinated into an entity. This lack of centralization and unity arose from the very order of society, and was at once its destruction, its charm, and its misfortune. In the first place, as regards its territory in comparison with the North, there were few large cities, and these were far apart. From Richmond to Charleston and New Orleans as the crow flies is nearly three times the distance from Boston to Philadelphia. In the days of postillions, and in the later days of steamboats and railroads, a warm damp climate made travel tedious and tiresome. Neither did the large cities occupy the positions of importance of their Northern rivals. Because of the fertile soil, fair climate and multiplicity of laborers the financial and political power of the country was to be found quite as often among the owners of the great plantations, as in the counting rooms or law offices of the metropolis. For various reasons, there were no great and powerful publishing houses, or influential magazines in general circulation, the newspaper taking these places. Another factor there was also, that was especially disintegrating for society at large. Before the war, education in the South was not universal. For about half the population, the women were educated at home, or in the case of the well-to-do, at seminaries and boarding schools. The men, as in the old Colonial days, had their private tutors, and were then sent to the Universities at home or abroad, and to travel. But for the mass of the poorer people, there was little to be had beyond the rudiments of training: and for many years the University of Virginia was the only educational institution below the line, which was the academic equal of the Northern colleges. Education here, as everywhere in the South, was along purely classic lines, which trained the people to find authority in the past, and which tended to create a lack of sympathy with problems other than those immediately concerning the public polity. Hence it was that the intellectual relationships of the North were exchanged in the South for social ties; which proved in times of stress more powerful and unifying than those beyond the Line, and which made possible, later on, the sympathetic consolidation and confederacy of the States at the first minute of invasion. In that instant, they were “a band of brothers,” in a common fellowship and interest: and thus it was that the very conditions militating against their literature and literary progress before the War, became in 1861, at once their allies in the field, and on Parnassus.

It is undeniable that the literary history of the antebellum South could brook no comparison with that of the North. An agricultural people such as the Southerners were, are apt to live their lyrics and romances, rather than write them. Her greatest novelists, Simms and Kennedy and John Esten Cooke, had given her quiet old-fashioned historical or pseudo-historical tales after the pattern of Sir Walter Scott. Today these seem curiously dull and prosy, and more so when placed in comparison with the extraordinarily ornate and grotesque Gothic romances of her women writers. That style of fiction of which Mrs. Hentz, Mrs. Southworth and Miss Evans were the representative authors may only be described as unreal and utterly false in tone and color. It is sensational to a degree, but its popularity was in proportion to its lack of artistic conception. Further than this, what was true of her prose, was true of her verse. Just as the fiction of the South was an echo of earlier modes, so her chief lyrists wrote in the manner of the cavaliers. On the whole, the Southern character had seemed better adapted to the practice of politics and the management of plantations, than to government in the province of literature. Southerners wrote easily and gracefully, but without the sincerity and beauty that arise from perfect sympathy between the craftsman and his craft.

It was when a great emotion had thrilled the heart of the South, and her spirit kindled to a single mighty flame in the prosecution of a cause on which she could unite all her energies, that the artificiality of her literature dropped away, and was replaced by strength of color, truth of outline and power of expression. Before the terror of civil war, the horror of invasion, and the indignity of submission to what she deemed a false interpretation of the Constitution and the principles of Liberty for which her fathers had fought, the literature of the South lost its superficiality, its romantic characteristics. From the earliest days of the war, prose in the form of history, philosophical essays and controversial debate, became the recognized and powerful weapon wielded by her greatest minds: while poetry, in the hands alike of poet and peasant, became the great national organ for emotional expression.

Fully to appreciate the themes and refrains that filled her war verse, it is necessary to understand for just what principles, and with what a temper, the South began the fight. Whatever had been the immediate excuse for war, for the Southerner the conflict very quickly resolved itself into a struggle for liberty. The principle of States’ Rights had always been cherished in the South since the days of the Articles of Confederation, in 1781, which declared at the very onset that while adopting this plan that was designed to make of the various integers a government that might be per se recognizable,—“each state retained its sovereignty, freedom and independence.” “Submission to any encroachment, the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of a state means slavery,” wrote Dr. Basil Gildersleeve.[6] “The extreme Southern States considered this right menaced by the issue of the presidential election.” The South had always clung to the earlier conception of national union of separate and independent units. That the North regarded her as a rebel against the Constitution of her fathers but goaded her the more bitterly, who felt that above all things she battled in the right, for the freedom of which Washington himself had dreamed, and which her own ancestors had been the greater part of the instrument in winning and perfecting. It was therefore to the South a holy contest. “Right or wrong, we were fully persuaded in our own minds, and there was no lurking suspicion of any moral weakness in our cause,” continued Dr. Gildersleeve.[7] “Nothing could be holier than the cause, nothing more imperative than the duty of upholding it. There were those in the South who when they saw the issue of the War, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause.”

With Lincoln’s decision to provision Fort Sumter, on April 1, 1861, and his call for troops, two weeks later, the question of States’ Rights was amplified by the addition of two other sentiments which three together formed the lofty inspiration that, in the South lifted the struggle above the commonplaces of civil strife. At once it was dignified into a war in defence of home, of native land, and of liberty. It was therefore with a certain nobility of purpose that the Confederate Army went forth to battle. The North had enlisted on a punitive expedition: the South had engaged in a crusade for her ideals. This was the magic touch that transmuted the comparative dross of her literature to pure gold. “When there flashed upon poetic souls not the political issues that were at stake, but the great human situation of the struggle, they gave voice to the pent up feelings of the new nation.”

The poetic genius of the Southerners had always been lyric in character, partly as the result of environment, partly that of racial temper, partly as an inheritance from the old Cavaliers who had been their ancestors. Nor had the lyrists of the South been of slender numbers. Professor Manly’s “Southern Literature” credits the land with over two hundred poets whom he considered worthy of mention. More than fifty of these belong to Virginia alone, and Dr. Painter wrote[8] of their work that “examination ... reveals among a good deal that is commonplace and imitative, many a little gem that ought to be preserved.” Their method was usually Byronic and amorous. They had, it is true, made little or no use of local color or legend, and had given over the narrative and the dramatic for the lyric. Their work, however, was always melodious and of easy numbers. This was their particular characteristic. The second, and indeed the more interesting, was the lack of the professional touch. Before the War, there had been few vocational poets, as there had been few professed literateurs. Poetry was the possession of the many, not of a small group of favored ones, and these wrote purely for the pleasure of the art, with so little care for fame or reputation that many of their verses still remain uncollected. When, therefore, the emotion of the conflict was borne upon the South, there were poets to fight her battles—just as there were soldiers in the field,—who were using an accustomed mode, though with unaccustomed sincerity and felicity. Indeed, the number of war poets is one of the amazing phenomena of the time: and as in the North, literature was mainly in their hands. Beyond the line there were Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, Holmes, Boker, Whitman and Mrs. Stowe. In the South, Hayne, Timrod, Ticknor, Simms, John R. Thompson, George Bagby, Dr. Holcombe, Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Charles, and Father Ryan filled roles as lofty, and as surely inspired. There was, however, this difference in their work. The poets of the North lived and wrote in comparative security and remoteness from the field. Their verses were characterized by a virtuous indignation against the rebellion, by appeals for men, anger at constant delay and unnecessary defeat, and deliberate exhortations in the name of the Union.

In the South, on the other hand, conditions were quite different. The whole land was a battle field, which every man, woman and child was bound by his principles to defend with his very life, and from which they had pledged themselves to drive the invading hordes. Each soul was personally involved in the conflict, and the poets, instead of looking on the struggle from afar, and distantly applauding it, looked out from the very centres of confusion, calling to their people words of help and cheer and courage. Theirs was not a plea to engage in the conflict. Theirs was the shout of “Come to the battle! Help us or we perish, and with us the sacred fires of true and personal Freedom.” It was the “terrible experience of a mighty conflict,[9] in which the soul of the people was ... brought out through struggles, passion, partings, heroism, love, death, ... all effective in the production of genuine feeling and the development of real character. While the battles were being fought in the homes of the Southerners, their poets sent forth now a stirring martial lyric, now a humorous song or poem recounting the trials and hardships of camp, hospital and prison life ... these becoming ever more and more intermingled with dirges for Jackson, for Albert Sidney Johnston, for Stuart, for Ashby, and finally for the Conquered Banner. In all these there was no trace of artificiality, no sign of the mawkish sentimentality of the old waxflowery, amateurish and sentimental race of Southern writers.... They were surcharged with deep, genuine, sincere feeling. They were instinct with life. In this respect the war poetry laid the foundation of the new Southern literature ... ‘new in strength, new in depth, new in the largest elements of beauty and truth.’”

It was a terrible price to pay for a renaissance of art, wrung as it was from the heart of a wounded people. It appeared still more a vain and useless sacrifice because at first the Southern war poetry gave rise to no literary genre. Indirectly, however, in its return to reality, to simplicity of emotion and truth of passion, this war verse was of inestimable value to the rising school of Southern fiction and prose. Nevertheless, the renaissance could not come at once. It was only when the pain and ruin of war had somewhat passed, and the South had begun to recover from the waste which the conflict had wrought on the land, when the bitterness of the struggle had softened with the changing years and generations, and after the new attitude towards life had had time to crystalize into permanency, that one of her younger poets could write of her, with truth:[10]

Lo! from the war cloud, dull and dense,

Loyal and chaste and brave and strong

Comes forth the South with frankincense,

And vital freshness in her song.

The weight is fallen from her wings,

To find a purer air she springs

Out of the night, into the morn.

CHAPTER II

The Historical Development of the Southern War Poetry

Contemporary criticism is seldom safely to be trusted, but there are times when contemporaneous comment is as valuable as it is enlightening. It is so with this statement by T. C. de Leon—in his introduction to an anthology of the Southern Civil War verse.[11] “If poems born of revolution bore no marks of the bitter need that crushed them from the hearts of their authors, they would have no value whatever, intrinsic or historical.”

Southern war poetry is worthy of preservation because it is an expression of vital appeal and of sentiment wrung from the heart of a people. For the most part, it was written under the stress of the moment. It was indeed the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, but only occasionally does it take its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity. Nevertheless, it speaks the language of men and women, and in it we may read, as perhaps through no other medium, the true story of the development of Southern character, of national spirit, and of definite sectional consciousness.

Today the poetry remains to us in the newspapers and magazines of the period, and in the anthologies and various collections of war verse (the best of these appearing either during the war or shortly after). Most interesting, but most ephemeral of them all, it remains in part in the small printed broadsides, or single sheets in handbill form, which usually appeared anonymously and mysteriously, at times even without the name of the printer. Issued in varying numbers, on wretched paper, and seldom gathered together, so many of these have perished in the passage of the years, that in many instances a single copy may remain in existence. Of the verses that circulated in MSS. there is now little trace. Occasionally, as in the case of K—s “To the Memory of Stonewall Jackson,” some old copy-book or diary will restore them to the light: but of the various sources, less result is obtained from this field than from the others.

Next to the appearance of the poems in the papers and journals, publication by broadside was probably the most common usage. Especially in the later days of the war, when newspaper publication was either temporarily or entirely suspended, this medium insured the quickest distribution of verse particularly applicable to the moment, a battle ode, a dirge of a fallen leader, or a song of peculiarly inspiriting phraseology. It was in this broadside form that “My Maryland” spread through the South almost in a day, anonymously, and often suffering from lines badly copied or cut. That Randall was the author was a fact silently understood and communicated: for it was safest and wisest in those early days, and particularly in the border states, that names be not mentioned. Even later, and after months of war, this condition still obtained. The appearance, in September, 1862, of “Stonewall Jackson’s Way,” written by Dr. John Williamson Palmer, as he listened to the guns of Sharpsburg, is a case in point. Dr. Palmer gives this history of the poem, and its publication:[12]

“In September, 1862, I found myself ... at Oakland ... in Garrett County, Maryland. Early on the sixteenth there was a roar of guns in the air, and we knew that a great battle was toward ... I knew that Stonewall was in it, whatever it might be: it was his way,—‘Stonewall Jackson’s Way.’ I had twice put that phrase into my war letters, and other correspondents, finding it handy, had quoted it in theirs. I paced the piazza and whistled a song of Oregon lumbermen and loggers that I had learned from a California adventurer in Honolulu. The two thoughts were coupled and welded into one to make a song: and as the words gathered to the call of the tune I wrote the ballad of ‘Stonewall Jackson’s Way’ with the roar of these guns in my ears. On the morrow I added the last stanza....

“In Baltimore I told the story of the song to my father, and at his request made immediately another copy of it. This was shown cautiously to certain members of the Maryland Club: and a trusty printer was found who struck off a dozen slips of it, principally for private distribution. That first printed copy of the song was headed ‘Found on a Rebel Sergeant of the Old Stonewall Brigade, Taken at Winchester.’ The fabulous legend was for the misleading of the Federal provost marshal, as were also the address and date, ‘Martinsburg, September 13, 1862.’”

It must not be supposed that this war verse which has survived to our day consists merely of battle songs and popular ballads on themes arising from the nature of the conflict. Just as the war was far reaching and general in its effect, touching every Southerner personally, and too often poignantly, so the poetic response was varied and modified to meet the demand of the moment. There is description, and narration; there are of course dialectics and polemics; there is satire; and there is even a little humor. And because through all this rings the personal and individual appeal, the prevailing note is lyric. Of the dramatic there is very little, notably Hayne’s “The Substitute,” and “The Royal Ape.” This last is a long dramatic narrative in iambic pentameter rimed couplets that is possibly more interesting as satire and propaganda than as pure drama. Yet neither of these is a work of free inspiration. The Southern war poet did his best work when out of the fulness of his heart, he either vowed allegiance to his beloved land, and her leaders, or wrote in passion and defiance as a resolved defender of the freedom of his Fathers.

Judged from an emotional point of view, this poetry falls into three distinct periods, obvious enough in themselves, but interesting in that by them we may see more clearly the issues of the war as reflected in the hearts of the warriors. There are the first poems of rebellion against oppression: lyrics of passionate defiance as well as of hortatory counsel: appeals to remember the glory of the past and the danger of the present. The second period started at the moment of invasion after which there was no longer need for a Congress to formulate the principles for which they fought, or to arrange for the unifying of the various State integers. Then began the poetry of actual conflict, taking the form of verses concerning particular battles, the narration of some heroic deed, the lament for a great hero, as well as camp ballads, and marching songs. As a connecting link with the first period, there are still the poems breathing the national spirit, and loyalty to the Southern cause. Even in the third and last period, that of disappointment, discouragement and actual defeat, this note continues, and is the more poignant for its unfaltering persistence in the face of calamity.

The poetry of the first period began in the closing days of 1860. In November of that year there had been elected by the North and West a President whose principles of government seemed to threaten the South with danger of extermination of her most precious interests. The platform of Republicanism she considered in every respect inimical to her importance as a unit in the central organization of states. Her very identity was endangered, and that to a section where pride of historic heritage was as dear as actual power of wealth and commerce, aroused her as could perhaps nothing else. Therefore, on December twentieth, 1860, South Carolina passed her order of secession, following it with the “Declaration of Independence,” which justified the previous action by recalling the two great principles asserted by the early colonies, namely, “the right of a state to govern itself, and the right of a people to abolish a government when it becomes destructive to the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles was the fact that each colony became and was recognized by the mother country as a free, sovereign and independent state.” It was a proud imperious challenge, and made immediate appeal to every Southerner to whom freedom and independence, personal or otherwise, was a precious birthright. The proclamation fired the imagination, as it did the poetic spirit of the land: the poetic response struck the same note. S. Henry Dickson’s “South Carolina” was one of the first poems to appear. Its verses are as lofty in tone as the lines of the proclamation, and equally as sincere. They are frankly exultant.

The deed is done! the die is cast;

The glorious Rubicon is passed:

Hail, Carolina! free at last.

Strong in the right I see her stand

Where ocean laves the shelving sand;

Her own Palmetto decks the strand.

She turns aloft her flashing eye;

Radiant, her lonely star on high

Shines clear against the darkening sky.

Fling forth her banner to the gale!

Let all the hosts of earth assail,—

Their fury and their force shall fail.

Oh, land of heroes! Spartan State!

In numbers few, in daring great,

Thus to affront the frown of fate!

And while mad triumph rules the hour,

And thickening clouds of menace lower,

Bear back the tide of tyrant power.

With steadfast courage, faltering never,

Sternly resolved, her bonds to sever:

Hail, Carolina! free forever!

This may be the expression of the hour, but it proved as well to be the poetic sentiment of the next four years. Every poet of the South, from the humblest maker of camp catches to the greatest of her lyrists, shared this attitude of resolve, as they watched their Spartan nation continue to wage what they consented to be a righteous war for freedom, against a tyrant power. Naturally, expression became more sharply crystalized with the actual invasion. None the less, even thus early, before the end of ’60, we have a precise foreshadowing of the war attitude of the Confederate poet.

With the passage of secession in South Carolina, at once the remaining “Cotton States” were torn by the conflict of making a great decision. There were those to whom the indignity of submitting their conception of government to what they called a usurpation of authority was inconceivable treachery to an ancient and honorable past: and there were those to whom unquestioning obedience to the Government at Washington was the only way of fulfilling the heritage of their ancestors. In the end, the extremists won. The North would offer no compromise: indeed, it would have been contrary to the Southern code of honor to have accepted halfway measures. To them there appeared no other course to pursue, no solution but to follow Carolina’s lordly lead. Mississippi seceded on January ninth, Florida on the tenth, Alabama on the eleventh, Georgia on the nineteenth, Louisiana on the twenty-sixth.

For the South as a whole, as well as for her poets, January had been a month of tempest. Following the secession of Carolina, the situation that had developed over Fort Sumter was dangerous to the extreme. As it afterwards proved, Sumter was the tinder which kindled the flame of war; and as early as January, when Major Anderson refused to surrender the fort the menace within the South began to show itself. The authorities of Charleston, endangered by Federal possession of Sumter, demanded its surrender. No decision could have been reached until after March fourth, when Lincoln was inaugurated. Meanwhile, on the fourth of February, the six states which had already left the Union, and Texas, which seceded three days earlier, formally met at convention in Charleston, and united in a Confederacy, in opposition to the Government at Washington. It was a move which their poets, as well as their more practically visioned men, had been frantically urging. Two of the most interesting of the poems of this period appeared, the one in the Southern Literary Messenger for January, by William Gilmore Simms, the other in the Charleston Courier, about the middle of the month, addressed in French, by R. Thomassy, under date of Nouvelle Orleans, 2 Janvier 1861, to “Les Enfants du Sud.” It is fiery and eloquent of passion.

Enfants du Sud, l’outrage et la menace

Aux nobles coeurs ne laissent plus de choix.

Le paix nous trompe: un serpent nous enlace

Tranchons ses noeuds, et defendons nos droits!

Qu’attendrons—nous pour reprendre l’epee,

Qui triompha d’un vieux monde oppresseur?

Le nord aussi, violant la foi juree,

Seme a son tour discorde et deshonneur.

Aux armes donc pour la cause sacree;

De nos ayeux vengeons les saintes lois;

Nous sommes Sparte, invincible, eprouvee;

Que sa vertu preside a nos exploits!

Gilmore Simms’ poem is less a call to arms, and more a warm and affectionate tribute to a beloved land, noteworthy because it proves that even before the Confederacy was formed, the people of the South were united in her love. The second stanza is better than the first.

She is all fondness to her friends: to foes

She glows a thing of passion, strength and pride;

She feels no tremors when the danger’s nigh,

But the fight over, and the victory won,

How with strange fondness turns her loving eye

In tearful welcome on each gallant son!

I glory that my lot with her is cast,

And my soul flushes and exultant sings;

Already there had begun the actual war verse, taking here the form of the invitation to arms. That war, the “irrepressible conflict,” was inevitable, was recognized by all sensible men. “Barhamville” in January addressed one of the first of these, “The Call,” to the editor of the South Carolinian. At this time, too, there appeared the fervid “Spirit of ’60,” in the Columbus Times, forerunner of a series in which were contrasted the spirit of the present and of ’76. To the South, both were wars for liberty, both struggles against oppression, in both contests the South was a vital factor; and the analogy was too good for a poetic eye to miss.

The finest single poem produced in this preliminary stage of the contest was that by Henry Timrod, “Ethnogenesis,” written during the meeting of the first Southern Congress, at Montgomery, in the early days of February. To the poet the Congress meant indeed the birth of a great nation, a nation among nations, strong in its right, and secure in national resource,

“marshalled by the Lord of Hosts

And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts

Of Moultrie and of Eutaw.”

It is a noble utterance and its dignity and melody of expression must have added greatly to the deep impression it created. In the Southern Literary Messenger for the month there are Joseph Brennan’s “Ballad for the Young South”—“Men of the South! our foes are up, in fierce and grim array,”—and the defiant “The Southland Fears No Foeman,” by J. W. M., in which is the richly suggestive line, “Her eagles yet are free;” while “from the Georgia papers,” under date of Atlanta, February first, there is the anonymous “Cotton States’ Farewell to Yankee Doodle.” This latter is especially interesting because it is one of the first of a “Farewell to Brother Jonathan” group which enjoyed considerable vogue during the late winter and which was answered in the North by Oliver Wendell Holmes, with the lines “Brother Jonathan’s Lament for Sister Caroline,” under date of March 25. Of the Confederate poems on this theme, “Farewell to Brother Jonathan” by “Caroline,” which appeared about this time seems closely connected with Holmes’ verses. The metre of the two poems is the same and the thought antithetic, although it would be difficult to determine which is the reply. The last two stanzas of “Farewell to Brother Jonathan” are particularly good.

O Brother! beware how you seek us again,

Lest you brand on your forehead the signet of Cain;

That blood and that crime on your conscience must sit;

We may fail, we may perish, but never submit!

The pathway that leads to the Pharisee’s door

We remember, indeed, but we tread it no more;

Preferring to turn, with the Publican’s faith,

To the path through the valley and shadow of death.

Three other poems, apparently of this month, should be mentioned in passing, as exemplifying the note of personal interest of the Southern poet in the issue of the struggle. Robert Joselyn’s “Gather! Gather!” the anonymous war song, “Come, Brothers! You are called!” and Millie Mayfield’s triumphant “We Come! We Come!” may not be poetry of the first order: nevertheless these are verses written by people to whom the threatened conflict is not a matter distant and aloof, but of intimate and vital concern.

March was a month of little action on both sides. In the North it witnessed the inauguration of Lincoln; in the South the completer organizing and unification of the Confederacy, and the beginning of negotiations by the Confederacy by which they might secure possession of Fort Sumter. If, however, the South was marking time, her poets were not. They continued to urge her on to fulfillment of her “destiny.” Indeed, this month saw written some of the very best and most resolute of her war verse. There is the indignant “Coercion,” by John C. Thompson—

“Who talks of Coercion? Who dares to deny

A resolute people the right to be free?”

There is the anonymous “Prosopopeia,” also in the Southern Literary Messenger, which with Timrod’s “Cry to Arms,” written a little later, is the best of the verse of this kind which the period produced. Another widely known poem of the month was St. George Tucker’s “The Southern Cross,” verses patterned after Key’s “Star Spangled Banner,” and which had enormous vogue, and was even set to music, later on. This in so far as can be determined is the first poetic use of the Southern Cross as the symbol of the Confederacy, a figure that was later adopted for the design of her flag, and which finally became, not only her ensign, but as well a symbol of the righteousness of her faith and cause. James Barron Hope’s “Oath of Freedom,”—

Born free, thus we resolve to live:

By Heaven, we will be free.

By all the stars which burn on high,

By the green earth—the mighty sea—

By God’s unshaken majesty

We will be free or die!—

is of a kind with Thompson’s “Coercion,” and was widely copied during this time. Another poem must be mentioned here, as presaging the turmoil to follow, “Fort Sumter,” by “H.,” in the New Orleans Delta, with the command of its refrain, “Carolina, take the Fort.”

The most eventful months of the year 1861 were April and July, for April inaugurated “the irrepressible conflict,” and July saw the first great battle of the war, and a complete Confederate victory. On the first of April, President Lincoln announced his decision to refuse surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates, and added that he would undertake to provision the garrison imprisoned there immediately. At once the South was aflame. On the morning of the twelfth of April, Beauregard, commander of the Southern forces at Charleston, ordered the shelling of the Fort, which continued through the thirteenth, and ended with the evacuation of the Fort on the fourteenth. The war had begun, and though the opening engagement had been without loss to either side, and had ended in a Confederate victory, a far bloodier and disastrous conflict was inevitable. To the rejoicing South, however, there was only the glory of the first decision to consider, and the poets in their rapture gave utterance to a sheaf of verse, innumerable ballads about Sumter, affectionate odes to the nation so gloriously born and baptized by victorious fire, two great national songs, and frantic appeals to North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky to join fortunes of the Confederacy.

The first song published in the South after the war began, and corresponding, in the North, to E. C. Stedman’s “The Twelfth of April” was, fittingly enough, “God Save the South” by George H. Miles of Frederick County, Maryland. Sung to music by C. W. A. Ellerbrock, it was designed to be, and accepted as the national hymn. It did not however, succeed in becoming a favorite. On the twenty-sixth of the month, James Rider Randall, inflamed by the circumstances of the “Baltimore Massacre” on April nineteenth, wrote his “My Maryland,” the most famous Southern poem produced by the war, and one whose influence was greater than a hundred battles. Circulated at first by broadsides it swept through the South like wildfire, and if any force could have drawn Maryland to the side of the Confederacy, it would have been that exerted by this poem. Her Union Governor, however, aided by Federal troops and tactful advice from Washington, succeeded in holding the State to the Union, although many Marylanders were ardent Southern sympathizers. Virginia, on the other hand, who, like Maryland, had been hesitating over her decision, hesitated no longer, after the episode of Sumter, implying as it did, Federal coercion. On the seventeenth of April she seceded from the Union. Her “pausing” had long been considered a shame and a reproach by Southern poets. Now, they burst forth in delight. “Virginia, Late But Sure!” was the triumphant shout of Dr. Holcombe, and Virginia’s answer was expressed in poems such as “Virginia to the Rescue,” “Virginia’s Rallying Call,” or “Virginia’s Message to the Southern States.”

The poetry produced or published in May chiefly concerns the decision of Virginia, and the assembling of the Southern armies, those “Ordered Away” to the field. Virginia’s entrance into the Confederacy had burnt all the bridges leading back—though remotely—to peace. At once the South proceeded to rally her forces to the standard of her cause, and gradually during May and June, flung out her battle line across Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi. Down the river it stretched through Forts Henry and Donelson to New Orleans. At one time, in ’63, the Confederate line surged forward through Western Virginia and Maryland so far into Pennsylvania that Harrisburg was directly menaced. It was the four years’ uncertain task of the Union forces to control this line, to break through it, turn it back and in upon itself, and finally to starve its scattered remnants into submission. As this was accomplished the first lyric outburst of the War—Timrod’s “Cry to Arms,” for example—was gradually exchanged for a slenderer volume of song. At first her poets encouraged the people to faith and labor; then they sang of hope and courage, attempting to relieve the despair of a nation whose cause was lost, and whose ruin seemed irretrievable.

In the spring of ’61, however, there was only exultation, while in the North the cry of “On to Richmond” welled and grew fiercer during May, June and the summer months. Especially did it grow imperative after July twentieth, when the Confederate Capital was transferred there from Montgomery. On the next day, July twenty-first, came the great opening battle of the war, when the Union army under General Scott, joined with Beauregard’s men at Manassas Junction. The result was a complete Confederate victory, and there was unrestricted panic and flight among the Federal troops (the source of much satiric comment among the Southern poets) when Joseph E. Johnston’s army, which had not been expected to arrive until too late to be of assistance to Beauregard, appeared at the crucial moment.

It was only natural that the wave of triumphant exultation which had thrilled the South after the fall of Sumter should again sweep the land. Her poets responded with a sheaf of poems, in which they wrote of the contest from every angle,—odes of thanksgiving for victory, narratives of the course of the flight, eulogies of Beauregard and Johnston, satires on the behavior of the Union forces, camp catches half satiric and half comic, poems of particular incidents of the fight, finally words of regret and sorrow for the slain, and the manner of their slaying. This last theme is particularly interesting, for the feeling of horror at the situation “where brother fought with brother” was ever-present with the Southerners throughout the four years of the War. The very best of the poems occasioned by Manassas were those of Mrs. Warfield, “Manassas,” Susan Archer Talley’s “Battle Eve,” Ticknor’s “Our Left,” and the lines by “Ruth,” entitled “The Battle of Bull Run,” dated Louisville, Kentucky, July twenty-fourth, and written in curious and effective stanzas of irregular “unrhymed rhythms.” Mrs. Warfield’s poem was stirring and vigorous, bold in metaphor and in expression.

They have met at last, as storm clouds

Meet in Heaven,

And the Northmen, back and bleeding

Have been driven:

And their thunders have been stilled,

And their leaders crushed or killed,

And their ranks, with terror thrilled

Rent and riven!

Like the leaves of Vallumbroso

They are lying;

In the moonlight, in the midnight

Dead and dying:

Like those leaves before the gale

Swept their legions wild and pale,

While the host that made them quail

Stood, defying.

But peace to those who perished

In our passes!

Light be the earth above them!

Green the grasses!

Long shall Northmen rue the day,

When they met our stern array,

And shrunk from battle’s wild affray

At Manassas.

Miss Talley’s “Battle Eve,” with its beautiful picture of twilight calm before the darker night of storm and death, is affecting in its simple direct appeal, and sincerity of regret for the carnage of conflict—and was called forth by the seriousness of the impending meeting at Manassas. Francis Orray Ticknor’s “Our Left”—suggested by the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Confederate left wing before McDowell’s men, until reinforced by the timely arrival of Johnston’s army, who brought victory with them, is a spirited, almost exalted account of the actual battle, and was immensely popular at the time. There are many versions of it still extant, in broadsides and anthologies,—for the most part anonymous, since the poem evidently was not at first acknowledged by Ticknor. This has led to a curious connection of names. In one of the broadsides versions in the collection of the Ridgway Library, in Philadelphia, the poem is dated Baltimore, Maryland, October 20, 1861, and is signed by “Old Secesh.” This signature is also given to “The Despot’s Song,” a popular Lincoln satire of a later period of the War, which again is assigned to Baltimore, and from circumstantial evidence seems to be the work of Dr. N. G. Ridgely, a Baltimorean who was a popular satirist of the day, and who signed his work variously “N. G. R.,” “Le Diable Baiteux,” “O. H. S.,” “Cola,” and “B.” This last signature is further associated with the name of James Ryder Randall, for in the Baltimore City Librarian’s Office, in Ledger 1411, there is a broadside version of “Maryland, My Maryland,” published in Baltimore, as were these other broadsides, and signed “B,” Point Coupee (La.), April 26, 1861. It would, of course, be impossible, so many years later, to puzzle out the interrelation of the poems and signatures, and indeed their value would hardly warrant the labor. It is, nevertheless, an interesting example of the chaos which at times arose from the necessarily surreptitious publication and circulation of the Confederate verse.

Manassas was the last great event of the year. There were several minor engagements between the two armies, notably the fight at Ball’s Bluff, on the twenty-first of October; and there was the “Trent Affair,” with the capture of the Confederate emissaries to England, Mason and Slidell, on November eighth. Nevertheless, the Southern poets did not lack inspiring material, the continued “aloofness” of Maryland and Kentucky being among their most vital themes. They were, of course, never idle with their lyrics of loyalty and continued to sound the war note or to sing of the South, with indomitable zeal. They had even by this time, become so accustomed to the state of war, that they could begin to work seriously with satire. The best in this genre written in ’61 are John R. Thompson’s “On to Richmond,” satirizing Winfield Scott’s first campaign, and “England’s Neutrality” (England had passed a proclamation of neutrality towards the two belligerents early in May, on the thirteenth): “O Johnny Bull, My Jo John,” an anonymous ballad occasioned by the presence of English frigates off the coast in ’61, and the unfortunately anonymous, but delightfully humorous “King Scare” (prompted by the terror in the North regarding the Confederate power in the field).

The close of the year was marked by a poem in the Southern Field and Fireside—a “Requiem for 1861,” by H. C. B. It is not of any particular excellence or poetic merit, but it is worthy of note for its expression of sincere sorrow for the conflict that was severing a land of brothers; and for a sense of the horror that war had brought to the South.

Year of terror, year of strife,

Year with evil passions rife

Pass, with seething angry flood,

Pass, with garments dipped in blood,—

Born ’mid hopes, but raised in fears,

With thy dewdrops changed to tears,

With thy springtime turned to blight,

And with darkness quenching light.

War’s fierce tread upon our land

Severing once a kindred band,

Child and father ranged for strife,

Brother seeking brother’s life!

Thou who doth unsheathe the sword

By the power of Thy Word,

And can by Thy mighty will

To the waves say “peace, be still”

Gather up this storm once more,

Where “Thy judgments are in store,”

Send Thy holy dove of Peace,

And our fettered land release!

The same longing for peace is shown in the verses “Christmas Day, A. D. 1861,” by M. J. H. But it must be a peace with victory. That was the earliest conception. By the lives of her sons who had died for her in the year just passed, the South was resolved on whatever sacrifice it might cost her to prevail, despite the fact that she was already weary of the struggle. No better expression of her unchecked purpose may be found than in Mrs. War field’s lines, written in the spring months before Manassas, “The Southern Chant of Defiance.” With Timrod’s “Ethnogenesis,” and Randall’s “Maryland,” it stands the finest poetry which the year produced in the Confederacy.

1862 began with the Confederacy prevailing. Nevertheless, the first six months of the year seemed to bring to the South nothing but gloom. In February of ’62, came news of the capture of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, February sixth, and on February eighth, of the fall of Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland. There was much more importance in these two defeats than at first appeared to the poets; for these forts were the two most valuable gateways to the Southwestern Confederacy, and their fall meant not only the first break in the Confederate line, but as well, direct menace of Southern control of the Mississippi, and New Orleans. It foreshadowed the later evacuation of Nashville, before Grant.

In January, the month before, the chief theme of the Southern poets had been the meditated burning of the cotton crop, by the Southern planters, and this cry of “Burn the Cotton!” had brought forth at least one finely phrased poem. In February, the themes concerned the siege and evacuation of Donelson, and there began the days of wretched anxiety that were to possess the Confederacy until the end of July, when the land was to know that the Virginia part of her line still held, and Richmond was safe. In March McClellan assumed chief control of the Union forces, and began his Peninsula campaign, in response to Lincoln’s reiterated cry, “On to Richmond.” On the eighth of the month, the Confederate ram “Merrimac” out from Norfolk, succeeded in breaking the Federal blockade of Hampton Roads, much to the consternation of the North. The next day, however, in her encounter with the “cheesebox” Monitor, “the turtle” Merrimac was too badly hurt to be of further or immediate use, and the elation of the day before gave way to depression, which was in no way relieved by the events of the next few months. April saw the practical occupation of the Mississippi, with the fall of Corinth, the evacuation of Fort Pillow, and on the lower river, Farragut and Porter’s occupation of New Orleans. Of the Mississippi line, there remained to the Confederates only Vicksburg and Port Hudson. For the South everything depended on the defeat of McClellan’s “On to Richmond” march, since on the sixth of the month, Albert Sidney Johnston, attempting to retrieve the disaster to the middle line in Tennessee, had engaged Grant at Shiloh and Pittsburgh Landing, with tremendous carnage. The battle had proved an incomplete Confederate defeat, but what was worse for the South, had occasioned Johnston’s death.

To all of the many events of these opening months, the Southern poets made continuous response. National songs inspiring faith and courage, as for example, Hewitt’s “Lines Written During These Gloomy Times, To Him Who Despairs,” spoken at the Richmond “Varieties” by Mr. Ogden, Wednesday night, May 7, 1862,—occasional verses suggested by various incidents and episodes of the war’s progress, camp catches and marching ballads praising individual troops and regiments, the poets poured forth in unstinting measure. However, the death of Albert Sidney Johnston, at Shiloh, made a deeper impression on the poets than any event of these spring months. The affection and pure love which the Southerners lavished on their leaders is one of the several remarkable phenomena of the war. In no other war, and in no other country do the leaders appear to have been so beloved, so idolized. To us today, the expression of sentiment seems extravagant and excessive. One attribute it has, however, and one that is not to be denied. The praise of the South for her great men is always passionately sincere. During the war, the Southerners were, as never before, a band of brothers. There was, therefore, in their relations with their great men, a personal contact and appeal which in the North was not so keenly felt. Albert Sidney Johnston, who with Beauregard, had been one of the heroes of Manassas, was the first of Confederate heroes to fall. The South mourned him, as she did all of her sons who fell in her defence, truly and warmly.

When “Stonewall” Jackson died, after Chancellorsville, almost a year later, the outburst of the poets with dirges and elegies was quite typical. S. A. Link quotes T. C. de Leon, the editor of South Songs (1866), as saying:[13] “I had in my collection no fewer than forty-seven monodies and dirges on Stonewall Jackson, some dozen on Ashby, and a score on Stuart.” Even today there are extant a round dozen of poems lamenting the death of Albert Sidney Johnston.

With all the sorrow that came to the South in these first months of depression, it is pleasant to see that she had not lost the saving humor and satiric sense that was so to strengthen her in the evil days which followed. On April sixteenth, for example, the Confederate Congress, alarmed by the condition of the Southern army, passed a measure for conscription. This was commented upon in the Southern Literary Messenger for the month, with a delightful epigram:

Let us hail in this crisis the prosperous omen

That our senate shows virtue higher than Roman;

It has spurned all titles of honor, for rather

Than claim that each member be called “Conscript Father,”

All self-aggrandizement they lay on the shelves,

And declare all men conscripts, excepting themselves!

During May and June of ’62 Jackson and Lee endeavored to arrest McClellan’s progress by their counter campaign in the Shenandoah. For the South it was a most successful move. Not only were the Southern arms carried to victory, but, through the unfortunate wounding of Joseph E. Johnston at Seven Pines, Lee, whose fame had grown in the Shenandoah, was placed in supreme command of the army of Northern Virginia. The turning point of the Southern fortunes had arrived. The battle of the Chickahominy, Malvern Hill, and the Seven Day’s fighting before Richmond, resulted in the defeat of McClellan’s campaign, and Richmond, for the next two years, was saved.

The army of the Confederacy, through the hardships and reverses of the first year of fighting, had become a seasoned and experienced (though, thanks to the blockade, a sadly ill-equipped) machine. Its three great leaders were Lee and Jackson and Beauregard. The Southerners at home were beginning to be accustomed to the privations of war. They were all as confident as ever of the righteousness of their war. Thus with a united Confederacy behind him and after another victory at “Second Manassas,” in ’62, Lee began his ill-starred Maryland campaign, as a counter-stroke against the Army of the Potomac. Lee’s part of the Confederate line, the Army of Northern Virginia, was the only part of the original battle wall still intact. Butler and his forces were in possession of New Orleans, the fall of Vicksburg, already in siege, was but a matter of time, and in the West, uncertainty still prevailed. John R. Thompson’s spirited “A Word to the West,” was written when Joseph E. Johnston was dispatched to relieve Vicksburg. It was at the same time an answer to A. J. Requier’s impassioned plea, “Clouds in the West.”

Those were anxious days, indeed. September saw the desperate conflict at Sharpsburg, the bloodiest single day’s battle of the war, which, although it was not a conclusive defeat, left the Confederate forces wretchedly crippled, and brought deepest anguish to the South. The gloom, however, was relieved in December by Lee’s victory at Fredericksburg. So the second year of war closed on a people and a nation, whose hearts were sick of the conflict. A second Christmas came to the Confederacy to find only the grim realities of life instead of the plumes and pomp of circumstance with which the war had begun. Mrs. Preston drew the picture for her countrywomen, in Beechenbrook:

How saddening the change is! The season’s the same,

And yet it is Christmas in nothing but name:

No merry expression we utter today—

How can we, with hearts that refuse to be gay?

We look back a twelfthmonth on many a brow

That graced the home hearthstone—and where are they now?

We think of the darling ones clustering there,

But we see, through our tears, an untenanted chair.

None the less, the South was still firm in her resolve to battle to the end. No sacrifice could be demanded so great that it would not be willingly offered on the altar of Liberty—

Thank God! there is joy in the sorrow for all—

He fell—but it surely was blessed to fall;

For never shall murmur be heard from the mouth

Of mother or wife, through our beautiful South,

Or sister or maiden yield grudging her part,

Tho’ the price that she pays, must be coined from her heart.

1863 proved another “Year of terror, year of strife.” In the far South, Butler, in possession of New Orleans, had begun his reign of terror that was the savage inspiration of several poems. From Hayne, in particular, it wrung one of the most powerful lyrics of the war.[14] Up the river, the siege of Vicksburg still continued. How spring came to the land was most poignantly expressed by Henry Timrod, in “Spring.”

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air

Which dwells in all things fair,

Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain

Is with us once again.

Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime

With such a blessed time.

Who in the west-wind’s aromatic breath

Could hear the call of Death!

Oh! standing on this desecrated mould,

Methinks that I behold,

Lifting her bloody daisies up to God,

Spring kneeling on the sod,

And calling with the voice of her rills

Upon the ancient Hills,

To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves

Who turn her meads to graves.

Spring brought with it another bloody engagement and Confederate victory, the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought in the first four days of May. In that, however, it caused the death of Stonewall Jackson it was, next to the actual surrender of the Southern army, the worst blow the Confederacy could have sustained. His death, some one once said, was like the death of an army. Certainly it took from Lee, already overburdened, his good right hand.

The outburst of mourning that followed on Jackson’s death, has already been noted. The South and her poets loved him, not only as a leader, but personally, as a great and good man. He represented, moreover, that element of faith and religious fervor which was one of the essential factors of the Southern character, and without which the faith that sustained the Confederacy through four years of war, and the days of ruin that followed, is inexplicable.

“Let me say,” wrote Dr. Gildersleeve,[15] “that the bearing of the Confederates is not to be understood without taking into account the deep religious feeling of the army and its great leaders. It is a historical element, like any other, and is not to be passed over in summing up the forces of the conflict.” Many are the poems, the “Prayers for the South,” and the individual supplications which still remain to attest the fact. For example, there is the “Battle Hymn of the Virginia Soldier,” an anonymous lyric of striking beauty. There is the simpler, yet equally sincere and devout “Soldier’s Battle Prayer” from the Southern Literary Messenger for April, ’62. “A Mother’s Prayer,” is another very touching poem, in the same theme: and there could be no more impressive evidence of the true religious strain in Southern hearts, than the verses, terrible in their satire, and burning in their indignant phrases, “The War Christians’ Thanksgiving,” by S. Teackle Wallis of Maryland, occasioned by the Union proclamation for a day of prayer in the North, and “Respectfully Dedicated to the War-Clergy of the United States, Bishops, Priests and Deacons.” Written as it was by a prisoner then in the dungeon of Fort Warren, it is one of the most powerful human documents of the War. At the same time, the South held her own days of national prayer and fasting: and the verses which her poets wrote on these occasions, were quite in character with the national temper.

In the dark days of the next two years, the South was to find need for all her faith and confidence in the right. As if Jackson’s death was not sufficient evil, July first to third brought Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, and on the day after this battle, the fall of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi. This meant the complete breaking of the Confederate line in the Southwest, and the return of the Army of Northern Virginia to its original position in Virginia. To complete the rout of the Confederate line, the Union forces now began to beat through the Southern defense in Tennessee and Kentucky, while Lee, back once more in Virginia, maneuvered to and fro against Meade. In the Southern campaign, the Confederates were steadily forced out of Tennessee, and Chattanooga, the objective of the Union troops. This, (which was with Richmond, the last important strategic point left to the Confederacy) was wrested from Bragg, and occupied by Rosecrans on the ninth. The latter thought that the fall of the city would be sufficient warning to the Southerner, and that he and his forces would at once withdraw. Far from doing that, however, Bragg engaged him, ten days later, at Chickamauga. It was a two days’ battle, on the nineteenth and twentieth, and was, next to Sharpsburg, the bloodiest engagement of the War. Though a Confederate victory, it was dearly bought. Yet even after all her suffering, the South willingly paid the price. Verses in the Richmond Sentinel called the river “Chickamauga, The Stream of Death,” where the foe—

Learned, though long unchecked they spoil us,

Dealing desolation round,

Marking, with the tracks of ruin

Many a rood of Southern ground;

Yet, whatever course they follow,

Somewhere in their pathway flows

Dark and deep, a Chickamauga,

Stream of death to vandal foes.

They have found it darkly flowing

By Manassas’ famous plain,

And by rushing Shenandoah

Met the tide of woe again;

Chickahominy, immortal,

By the long ensanguined fight,

Rappahannock, glorious river,

Twice renowned for matchless fight.

Heed the story, dastard spoilers,

Mark the tale these waters tell,

Ponder well your fearful lesson,

And the doom that there befell;

Learn to shun the Southern vengeance,

Sworn upon the votive sword,

Every stream a Chickamauga

To the vile invading horde!

None the less, in the battles that followed, the Union forces prevailed. In the three days’ fighting before Chattanooga, culminating in the Battle of Missionary Ridge, on November twenty-fifth, the Confederates were set in full flight. J. Augustine Signaigo described this fight in “The Heights of Mission Ridge.” The final catastrophe had begun.

It had been threatening for a long time. By the end of ’63, nearly every Southern home had suffered some loss or sorrow. “Our Christmas Hymn” by Dr. John Dickson Bruns of Charleston, put the grief of the land into words.

Wild bells! that shake the midnight air

With those dear tones that custom loves,

You wake no sounds of laughter here

Nor mirth in all our silent groves;

On one broad waste, by hill or flood,

Of ravaged lands your music falls,

And where the happy homestead stood

The stars look down on roofless halls.

Timrod’s “Christmas, 1863,” shows a South that is sobered, and weary of battle: who with no idea of yielding, nevertheless, yearns for peace.

How grace this hallowed day?

Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire,

Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire

Round which the children play?

How could we bear the mirth,

While some loved reveller of a year ago

Keeps his mute Christmas now beneath the snow,

In cold Virginian earth?

How shall we grace the day?

Oh! let the thought that on this holy morn

The Prince of Peace—the Prince of Peace was born,

Employ us, while we pray!

He who till time shall cease,

Shall watch that earth, where once, not all in vain

He died to give us peace, will not disdain

A prayer whose theme is—peace.

Perhaps, ’ere yet the spring

Hath died into the summer, over all

The land, the peace of His vast love shall fall

Like some protecting wing.

Peace on the whirring marts,

Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams,