Esther Parker Ellinger

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And thus, with paean sung and anthem rolled,
Give her, unspotted, to the God of Fire.
Gather around her sacred ashes, then,
Sprinkle the cherished dust with crimson rain
Die! as becomes a race of freeborn men,
Who will not crouch to wear the bondsmen’s chain.
To the poets of the South, the fate of this city was particularly significant, for if any place may be said to have been the literary centre of the Confederacy, it was Charleston. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is remarkable that such freshness of phrase could be given to men wearied by three years of disappointing struggle. One may imagine that this is but another indication of the vitality and spirit that was an integral part of the Southern character.
By the end of ’64, the Confederate battle wall had been crumpled and was beaten in, everywhere except in Virginia, before Richmond. Peace for a stricken land was the immediate concern alike of poets and people. Beyond that they did not trust themselves to think: but peace was the universal prayer. ”

“ Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams,
Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace in all our homes,
And peace in all our hearts!
1864 was a year to be endured in stricken anguish. After a comparative lull during the first months of the war, on the fourth of May three Union armies moved forward, two destined for Richmond to shatter what part of the original Confederate line there was left, and one for Atlanta against Johnston and Hood, setting out to employ the troops still in the far South, and keep them from the relief of Lee and Richmond. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 22] to the extreme. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 25] 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 14] strife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet these poems of defeat are infinitely the more appealing in that the fire and dash of the earlier verses has here given way to the dignity of sorrow. “For the people’s hopes are dead.”
Hundreds of poems written during the four years of conflict reflect either individual reactions to war conditions, or incidents of battle. Besides these there are the prison verses, humorous pieces, and the southern songs, which in no way concern the historical passage of the War. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They vary in excellence from “The Cavaliers’ Glee” by Captain William Blackford of Stuart’s staff, to the extremely popular and delightful “Goober Peas,” by A. Pender. For the camp catches there were certain stock tunes, such as the “Happy Land of Canaan,” “Wait for the Wagon,” “We’ll Be Free in Maryland,” “Gay and Happy,” which were used over and over, and to which words were improvised to fit the occasion. Even the slender Confederate Navy had her stock of ballads. “The Alabama,” by E. King, author of “Naval Songs of the South,” is the best representative of this class. ”

“ 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 [Pg 27] 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The storm and stress of youth have been upon us, and the nation has not lacked its lyric cry.... One who underrates the significance [Pg 8] 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. ”

“ 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. ”