Davidson: But your fame shall never die

The Battle of Lake Champlain during the War of 1812 took place on September 11, 1814. Many of the sailors who were killed during that military engagement were buried in a mass grave on Crab Island, just outside the town of Plattsburgh, New York.

About eight years later, the young Plattsburgh-born poet Lucretia Maria Davidson traveled across Lake Champlain in a steamboat and saw Crab Island. Remembering the dead that remained interred and unmarked there, the 14-year old poet wrote "Reflections, on Crossing Lake Champlain in the Steamboat Phoenix":

Islet on the lake's calm bosom,
    In thy breast rich treasures lie;
Heroes! there your bones shall moulder,
    But your fame shall never die.

Islet on the lake's calm bosom,
    Sleep serenely in thy bed;
Brightest gem our waves can boast,
    Guardian angel of the dead!

Calm upon the waves recline,
    Till great Nature's reign is o'er;
Until old and swift-winged time
    Sinks, and order is no more.

Then thy guardianship shall cease,
    Then shall rock thy aged bed;
And when Heaven's last trump shall sound,
    Thou shalt yield thy noble dead!

Davidson was already sick with the tuberculosis that would kill her about two years writing the above poem. She was 16. Her sincere interest in poetry, coupled with her young innocence, lent credence to the belief that her tuberculosis inspired her to have a strong poetic sensibility. Her supporters after her death included Samuel F. B. Morse and Catharine Maria Sedgwick each of whom assisted with posthumous publications of her work.

Catharine Sedgwick: to pour a golden light

Nevertheless, my dearest sister, I would not have you love me any less than you do, because your affection has an irresistible power to improve and to elevate, to lift above low attachments, to separate from unworthy associations, to cheer me when I am sad, to rouse me when I am inefficient, to rescue both me and the world from that sort of morbid quarrel into which we are apt to get with each other, when it seems as if there were nothing here worth living for, and to pour a golden light on every object that skirts the path of my pilgrimage.

The above quote comes from a letter from Robert Sedgwick to his sister, the author Catharine Maria Sedgwick, March 28, 1816. Miss Sedgwick, as she was often named, was then about 26 years old, had already begun submitting short contributions to periodicals. She was still six years away from her first novel, A New-England Tale (1822), and 11 years away from her most popular work, Hope Leslie (1827). These works and various others made her one of the first financially successful women writers in the United States — and one of the most popular.

Much of Sedgwick's writings promoted virtue, religious tolerance, and strong roles for women. She never married and remained quite devoted to her large family (she was the ninth child in the family). Her four brothers supported her work as a writer and encouraged her to publish when she was just starting. Throughout her life, she alternated living with her brother Charles in western Massachusetts and with her brother Robert in New York City. In fact, she dedicated her fourth novel, Clarence; Or, a Tale of Our Own Times (1830), "To my Brothers — my best friends... as a tribute of affection." As she was completing the novel, she wrote to her brother Charles that she was unsatisfied with it: "That is the misfortune of a familiarity with fine works, carrying your taste so far ahead of your capacity."

When she reissued Clarence nearly two decades later, Sedgwick admitted that popularity, and novels in particular, were "ephemeral." She hoped, nevertheless, readers would enjoy the "home atmosphere" of this novel of manners set in New York. More than that, Sedgwick had written a book that questioned the development of American society, concerned that there was less concern for spiritual or social responsibilities in a world that emphasized profit and materialism.

Birth of Cranch: Nature is but a scroll

Christopher Pearse Cranch was born on March 8, 1813, in what is now Alexandria, Virginia, the youngest son of 13 children. As he recalled many years later, "My first recollections date from the house in Washington Street, when I was about four or five years old." Not all of those recollections were positive. He remembered one of his teachers as "a great tyrant" known for "devising all sorts of strange, an sometimes cruel, punishments for the boys. Two of his sisters died when Christopher was young. "The death of these two elder sisters were my first great griefs, and made a deep impression on me."

Cranch's father, William Cranch, was appointed by President John Adams to the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia as an assistant judge (later to promoted as chief judge by Thomas Jefferson) before the boy's birth. Like Adams, the Cranch family also owned and operated a farm. After graduating from a college in D.C., Christopher Pearse Cranch made his way to Harvard Divinity School, after which he became influenced by the new liberal theology known as Transcendentalism.

Cranch's career was divided as a preacher, an artist, and as an author, editor, and poet. He lived for 78 years, almost to the very end of the century, outliving many of his fellow Transcendentalists. Perhaps his greatest poem is also one of his earliest — and his most Transcendental. "Correspondences" was originally published in The Dial in January 1841. In it, Cranch shows a "correspondence" with a Nature that represents the deity. That deity creates a world in much the same way as an author or poet creates his writing. In turn, then the deity and the speaker are able to communicate directly, if only one can discern the writing:

All things in Nature are beautiful types to the soul that will read them;
Nothing exists upon earth, but for unspeakable ends.
Every object that speaks to the senses was meant for the spirit:
Nature is but a scroll—God's hand-writing thereon.
Ages ago, when man was pure, ere the flood overwhelmed him,
While in the image of God every soul yet lived,
Everything stood as a letter or word of a language familiar,
Telling of truths which now only the angels can read.
Lost to man was the key of those sacred hieroglyphics—
Stolen away by sin—till with Jesus restored.
Now with infinite pains we here and there spell out a letter;
Now and then will the sense feebly shine through the dark.
When we perceive the light which breaks through the visible symbol,
What exultation is ours! we the discovery have made!
Yet is the meaning the same as when Adam lived sinless in Eden,
Only long-hidden it slept and now again is restored.
Man unconsciously uses figures of speech every moment,
Little dreaming the cause why to such terms he is prone—
Little dreaming that everything has its own correspondence
Folded within it of old, as in the body the soul.
Gleams of the mystery fall on us still, though much is forgotten,
And through our commonest speech illumines the path of our thoughts.
Thus does the lordly sun shine out a type of the Godhead;
Wisdom and Love the beams that stream on a darkened world.
Thus do the sparkling waters flow, giving joy to the desert,
And the great Fountain of Life opens itself to the thirst.
Thus does the word of God distil like the rain and the dew-drops,
Thus does the warm wind breathe like to the Spirit of God,
And the green grass and the flowers are signs of the regeneration.

O thou Spirit of Truth; visit our minds once more!
Give us to read, in letters of light, the language celestial,
Written all over the earth—written all over the sky:
Thus may we bring our hearts at length to know our Creator,
Seeing in all things around types of the Infinite Mind.

Death of Tecumseh: Stop, stranger!

On October 5, 1813, near Moraviantown, in Ontario, Canada, United States forces led by William Henry Harrison engaged in battle with the British Army allied with s Native American coalition led by a Shawnee named Tecumseh. The Battle of the Thames River, as it was called, was a decisive victory for the Americans in the War of 1812. Tecumseh, however, was killed in battle that day.

Charles A. Jones, a poet/lawyer born in Philadelphia but raised in Cincinnati, honored Tecumseh in a poem in 1838. It begins by noting that there was no known grave marker for him:

Stop, stranger! there Tecumseh lies;
    Behold the lowly resting-place
Of all that of the hero dies;
    The Caesar — Tully, of his race,
Whose arm of strength, and fiery tongue,
    Have won him an immortal name,
And from the mouths of millions wrung
    Reluctant tribute to his fame.

Stop — for 'tis glory claims thy tear!
    True worth belongs to all mankind;
And he whose ashes slumber here,
    Though man in form was god in mind.
What matter he was not like thee,
    In race and color; 'tis the soul
That marks man's true divinity;
    Then let not shame thy tears control.

Art thou a patriot? — so was he!
    His breast was Freedom's holiest shrine;
And as thou bendest there thy knee,
    His spirit will unite with thine.
All that a man can give, he gave;
    His life: the country of his sires
From the oppressor's grasp to save:
    In vain — quench'd are his nation's fires.

Art thou a soldier? dost thou not
    O'er deeds chivalric love to muse?
Here stay thy steps — what better spot
    Couldst thou for contemplation choose?
The earth beneath is holy ground;
    It holds a thousand valiant braves;
Tread lightly o'er each little mound,
    For they are no ignoble graves.

Tecumseh had been the main figure responsible for rallying an alliance among Native American tribes. For years, he had called for the return of lands granted to his people years earlier while Harrison was governor of the Indiana territory. Jones celebrates Tecumseh's leadership and bravery by comparing his work to other legendary battles in the poem, including those at Marathon and Thermopylae. Tecumseh, after all, sacrificed himself for an idea: that his people deserved a recognized country of their own. Jones goes on:

Oh, softly fall the summer dew,
    The tears of heaven, upon his sod,
For he in life and death was true,
    Both to his country and his God;
For oh, if God to man has given,
    From his bright home beyond the skies,
One feeling that's akin to heaven,
    'Tis his who for his country dies.

Rest, warrior, rest! — Though not a dirge
    Is thine, beside the wailing blast,
Time cannot in oblivion merge
    The light thy star of glory cast;
While heave yon high hills to the sky,
    While rolls yon dark and turbid river,
Thy name and fame can never die—
    Whom Freedom loves, will live forever.

Birth of Jones Very: Flee to the mountains

Jones Very was born August 28, 1813 to two unmarried first cousins, the oldest of what would become six children. His father, also named Jones Very, was a sea captain, and his mother Lydia was an outspoken atheist who believed marriage was a personal moral obligation which did not need any legal recognition. At 10, young Jones Very took his first sea voyage with his father, sailing to Russia; he served as a cabin boy a year later to New Orleans (his father did not survive the return trip).

As a teenager, Very became the breadwinner for the family, serving at an auction house and as a teaching assistant to a principal in his native Salem, Massachusetts. It was in this period that Very began studying religion deeply, offsetting his mother's atheism. It was also in his home town's newspaper that he first began publishing poetry. After graduating from Harvard, he enrolled in the Divinity School there but never graduated. He became known for his enthusiasm for literature and his engaging conversational style (which seemed to disappear when he was in larger groups). Ralph Waldo Emerson brought him into his circle and inspired him with his Transcendentalist philosophies. But then Very went insane.

He had become a bit eccentric over the years, deeply moved by his beliefs in God. In the summer of 1838, while tutoring Harvard students, he suddenly called out, "Flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand!" He had a "nervous collapse" was fired from his job. He returned to Salem, where he told people he was the "Second Coming" of Christ and offered to baptize people "with "the Holy Ghost and with Fire," including his neighbor and fellow Transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody. Bronson Alcott was impressed by the fervor of the young man and noted, "He is insane with God — diswitted in the contemplation of the holiness of Divinity." A local minister finally had him committed in an insane asylum. The superintendent determined Very's condition was due to digestive problems.

In fact, Very believed his role as a prophet would last only twelve months. After that period, he calmed down considerably and became reclusive, living with family in Salem, while occasionally serving as a guest minister. He lived a quiet and uneventful life until his death in 1880. He published one major book, with the help of Emerson (who questioned Very's claim that the Holy Spirit guided his pen as he wrote, asking, "cannot the spirit parse & spell?"), collecting his essays on William Shakespeare and his poetry (mostly sonnets), including "In Him We Live":

   Father! I bless thy name that I do live,
   And in each motion am made rich with thee,
   That when a glance is all that I can give,
   It is a kingdom's wealth if I but see;
   This stately body cannot move, save I
   Will to its nobleness my little bring;
   My voice its measured cadence will not try,
   Save I with every note consent to sing;
   I cannot raise my hands to hurt or bless,
   But I with every action must conspire;
   To show me there how little I possess,
   And yet that little more than I desire;
   May each new act my new allegiance prove,
Till in thy perfect love I ever live and move.

Birth of Greeley: We are all born poets

Though born in New Hampshire on February 3, 1811, Horace Greeley made his biggest impact in New York. Founder of the New York Tribune, mentor and booster to people like Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller and Rufus W. Griswold, Greeley flourished at a time when journalists were powerhouses, and took his influence to a national scale when he ran for President of the United States just before his death.

He started his life on a poor farm in Amherst, New Hampshire but his father's bankruptcy forced the family to move to Vermont. Young Greeley knew early on that he wanted to get into the printing business and began looking for an apprenticeship at age 11. After stints with a couple newspapers, he finally made his way — partially by foot — to New York in August 1831. As he began earning some success as a printer and burgeoning newspaper man, he also began actively involving himself with Whig politics even while looking into more radical ideas, including Fourierism. In 1841, he produced the first issue of the New York Tribune (a venture he held for the rest of his life). After his death, he was honored in New York City and Chappaqua, New York.

Greeley recognized his humble beginnings even as he became famous and influential. His autobiography, Recollections of a Busy Life, published in 1872, was dedicated to those who had the same potential:

To our American boys, who, born in poverty, cradled in obscurity, and early called from school to rugged labor, are seeking to convert obstacle into opportunity, and wrest achievement from difficulty

A deep thinker and political activist (as well as a frequent target for critics and caricaturists), with a great appreciation for literature and poetry, Greeley was often erudite. "We are all born poets," he once wrote. From the "Miscellanies" section of his autobiography:

The world is a seminary; Man is our class-book; and the chief business of life is Education. We are here to learn and to teach, — some of us for both of these purposes, — all at least for the former. Happy he, and greatly blest, who comes divinely qualified for a Teacher, —fitted by nature and training to wrestle with giant Ignorance and primal Chaos, to dispel unfounded Prejudice, and banish enshrouding Night. To govern men, in the rude, palpable sense, is a small achievement; a grovelling, purblind soul, well provided with horsemen and artillery, and thickly hedged with bayonets and spears, may do this

On the bank of the Monongahela, near its confluence with the Allegheny

As she later wrote in her autobiography: "I was born on the 6th of December, 1815, in Pittsburg, on the bank of the Monongahela, near its confluence with the Allegheny." Jane Grey Cannon was born in the then-frontier city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 6, 1815. Raised in a religious family, she was only 8 when she took up lace-making to help bring in an income for her mother when her father died in 1823. As a young girl, her coughing worried her mother, who feared she had caught tuberculosis (the same disease which killed the girl's father). Young Jane was pulled from school and, in defiance of the usual treatment for tuberculosis, was forced by her mother into a strong exercise regimen and a strict diet. The illness proved to be less severe than assumed and Jane became a schoolteacher at age 14.

She married James Swisshelm at age 20, though the marriage was troublesome from the start. The couple, nevertheless, moved to Kentucky, where Jane Grey Swisshelm (as she became known) witnessed the horrors of slavery for the first time. She returned to Pennsylvania to care for her dying mother; her husband sued for land she inherited, believing he should own it as her husband. They divorced in 1857.

Swisshelm, unsurprisingly, became a strong advocate not only of abolitionism but also the legal rights of women, as well as becoming a critic of capital punishment. Most often, she wrote for anti-slavery newspapers and various publications near Pittsburgh. She soon moved to Minnesota, where she founded newspapers of her own and continued her work. During the Civil War, she volunteered as a nurse, particularly after the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. She described her experience in that battle, which took place 150 years ago this month, in her autobiography, Half a Century, in 1881:

I made a tuck in a queen's-cloth dress, donned it, selected a light satchel, put into one side a bottle of whiskey and one of sherry, half a pound of green tea, two rolls of bandage and as much old table-linen as packed them close; put some clothing for myself in the other side, and a cake of black castile soap, for cleansing wounds; took a pair of good scissors, with one sharp point, and a small rubber syringe, as surgical instruments; put these in my pocket, with strings attaching them to my belt; got on my Shaker bonnet, and with a large blanket shawl and tin cup, was on board... an hour before the boat left.

With Swisshelm was a young, beautiful woman named Georgie. On the journey to Fredericksburg, they meet the famous Dorothea Dix, who offers no kind greeting before rudely suggesting Fredericksburg needed no help and, further, accusing Georgie of being out of place there (implying, in the text, that Dix thought her too beautiful to be going to nurse wounded soldiers). As Swisshelm writes:

I told Miss Dix that I differed with her about the kind of women who should go into such places. We wanted young, vigorous women—women whose self-respect and social position would command the respect of those to whom they ministered. She grew angry again, and said:

"She shall not go to Fredericksburg; I will have her arrested!"

...When she reached this climax, I raised my head, looked into her face, and said: "I shall not be sorry Miss Dix, if you do; for then I shall apply to my friends, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, and have your authority tested."

I went on with my work; she growled something and left the boat, but did not disturb us further.

Irving and Hoffman: the poor little fellow

A little boy suffered an accident in New York resulting in the loss of his leg, prompting a letter from Liverpool dated November 23, 1817. The little boy was future author Charles Fenno Hoffman; the letter-writer was Washington Irving. Writing to Hoffman's mother, Irving offered his sympathy:

It is with utmost concern that I have heard of the accident that has happened to Charles, not merely on his account, but on account of the shock it must have given to your feelings, already so much harassed by repeated afflictions. I hope the poor little fellow has recovered his health, and that you have been enabled to sustain this new trial.

Irving knew the family through Matilda Hoffman, the half-sister of Charles, to whom Irving was engaged when she was a teenager. She died in 1809, but Irving kept in touch with the family (and, incidentally, never married). His letter shows a genuine concern — and, of course, impressive literary ability, made all the more interesting because his fiction rarely showed such sentimentality:

The heart must battle with its own sorrows, and subdue them in silence; and there are some minds, as there are bodies, of such pure and healthful temperament, that they have within their natures a healing balm to medicine their own wounds and bruises. To the soothing influence of such a spirit, my dear friend, I trust for your once more recovering tranquility after all the sorrows and bereavements you have suffered.

Irving also offered an update on his own circumstances, worried that his future prospects "are somewhat dark and uncertain." Two years later, he would begin publishing the work which would put him at the forefront of early American writing: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Readers would have to wait much longer before Hoffman, then nine years old, offered his own literary contributions to the world.

Birth of Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta

The daughter of an Irish nationalist who later moved to Cuba, Anne Charlotte Lynch was born in Bennington, Vermont, on November 11, 1815, raised in Connecticut, went to school in Albany, New York and, later, wrote her first book on Rhode Island. It was in Connecticut that she wrote to her friend on her 20th birthday:

I believe I have had every variety of feeling humanity is capable of, and there remains nothing for me now, not even a disappointment. My mind, too early matured, has reached at this period the limit it should only have attained at threescore; and now, like some plant, blossoming prematurely, it droops and withers, while all around it is verdant. But you will call me an egotist, and I shall deserve it; so let me turn to some more agreeable topic.

She then moved to Manhattan and established herself at the center of literary and elite cultural circles (surrounded by people like Margaret Fuller, Horace Greeley, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, Bayard Taylor, and others). It was in Europe that she met her husband, the Italian professor Vincenzo Botta.

In addition to earning a reputation as one of the greatest salon hostesses of the era, Lynch Botta was a prolific poet and occasional artist. Much of her writing reflects those dual interests; several of her poems are based on her reactions to paintings or sculptures. Usually, her poems had a slight religious tint to them and many mused on death and the afterlife. Her poem "Books for the People" (published in 1849):

          Light to the darkened mind
Bear, like the sun, the world's wide circle round,
Bright messengers that speak without a sound!
          Sight on the spirit blind
Shall fall where'er ye pass; your living ray
Shall change the night of ages into day;—
          God speed ye on your way!

          In closet and in hall,
Too long alone your message hath been spoken:
The spell of gold that bound ye there is broken;
          Go forth and shine on all;
The world's inheritance, the legacy
Bequeathed by Genius to the race are ye;
          Be like the sunlight, free!

          A mighty power ye wield!
Ye wake grim centuries from their deep repose,
And bid their hoarded treasuries unclose,
          The spoils of time to yield.
Ye hold the gift of immortality;
Bard, sage, and seer, whose fame shall never die,
          Live through your ministry.

          Noiseless upon your path,
Freighted with lore, romance, and song, ye speed,
Moving the world, in custom and in creed,
          Waking its love or wrath.
Tyrants, that blench not on the battle-plain,
Quail at your silent coming, and in vain
          Would bind the riven chain.

          Shrines, that embalm great souls!
Where yet the illustrious dead high converse hold,
As gods spake through their oracles of old;
          Upon your mystic scrolls,
There lives a spell to guide our destiny;
The fire by night, the pillared cloud by day,
          Upon our upward way.

Birth of Payson Prentiss: Sweet their refrain

Elizabeth Payson already faced extreme religious pressure beginning with her birth in Portland, Maine, on October 26, 1818. Her father, Congregationalist minister Edward Payson was extremely pious, once telling his wife he would hate her if his love began to compete with his love for Christ ("I am Christ's; I must be Christ's," he wrote her). In fact, he was so worried about his burgeoning happiness that, upon his daughter Elizabeth's birth, he anticipated the baby or his wife would die as punishment. "Truly, my cup runs over with blessings," he admitted the day after her birth. "I can still scarcely help thinking that God is preparing me for some severe trial; but if He will grant me His presence as He does now, no trial can seem severe."

Young Elizabeth grew up being called a "little angel," but she was often sick or weak. "I never knew what it was to feel well," she recalled in 1840. She eventually married another minister, George Lewis Prentiss, and moved to New York. Some of her earliest writings were published in the 1830s in Nathaniel Willis's Youth's Companion (Willis, in turn, named two children after Edward Payson, including the daughter who changed her name to Fanny Fern). She also published an autobiographical novel Stepping Heavenward in 1869 and, ultimately, she published some 20 books. Her most famous work, however, is likely the hymn published under her married name Elizabeth Prentiss titled "More Love to Thee, O Christ":

More love to thee, O Christ,
   More love to thee;
Hear thou the prayer I make
   On bended knee;
This is my earnest plea:
More love, O Christ, to thee!
   More love to thee,
   More love to thee!

Once earthly joy I craved,
   Sought peace and rest;
Now thee alone I seek,
   Give what is best:
This all my prayer shall be,—
More love, O Christ, to thee!
   More love to thee,
   More love to thee!

Let sorrow do its work,
   Send grief and pain;
Sweet are thy messengers,
   Sweet their refrain,
When they can sing with me,
More love, O Christ, to thee!
   More love to thee,
   More love to thee!

Then shall my latest breath,
   Whisper thy praise,
This be the parting cry
   My heart shall raise;
This still its prayer shall be:
More love, O Christ, to thee,
   More love to thee,
   More love to thee!

Birth of Strother, "pencil holder"

David Hunter Strother was born on September 26, 1816 in Martinsburg, Virginia (now part of West Virginia), though he later became known by the pseudonym Porte Crayon (French for "pencil holder"). After a brief attempt at study at Jefferson Academy in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, he turned his attention to art and engraving in Philadelphia. His work as an artist for Harper's was renowned throughout the country; it was said that he was the most famous graphic artist before the beginning of the Civil War.

In the years leading up to the war, Strother (who witnessed the trial of John Brown, and considered it proof of the "majesty of the law") expressed a distrust for the fanaticism of some abolitionists in the North, though he was also skeptical of "fire-eating" Southerners promoting secession. Even so, Strother sided with the North during the war and became a topographer for the Union Army. In his private diary, however, he often criticized decisions made by President Abraham Lincoln. He later joined a cavalry and was eventually promoted to brevet brigadier general. His Union loyalty strained his relationship with most of his extended family, all of whom were steadfastly in support of the Confederacy. Years after the war, he served in the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes (as did poet James Russell Lowell).

Strother/Crayon created engravings mostly for magazines, but he also illustrated full-length books (including his own, The Adventures of Porte Crayon and His Cousins, in 1871). Much of his work, both in his art and in his writing, focuses on geography, travel, or landscapes. Over 800 published illustrations are credited to him before his death in 1888.

*I owe some of this information to Jonathan M. Berkey, whose essay on Strother is included in Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South (2004, edited by John C. Inscoe and Robert C. Kenzer)

We are coming, Father Abraham

In July 1862, Abraham Lincoln called for his countrymen to stand up and join the Union cause during the second year of the Civil War. To meet the needs of the conflict, Lincoln dramatically called for 300,000 men to enlist voluntarily. Despite the huge number, most American news outlets and the general public in the North supported the call; many towns appointed individual recruiters or full committees. No line of support, however, could match the poem/song "We Are Coming, Father Abraham," credited to James Sloan Gibbons, who was born July 23, 1810:

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore;
We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

If you look across the hill-tops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride.
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour;
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

If you look all up our valleys where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line;
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

You have called us and we 're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide,
To lay us down for Freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside,
Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!

Birth of Meek: Rose of Alabama

Alexander Beaufort Meek was born in South Carolina on July 17, 1814. He later became better associated with Alabama, where his family moved after a 46-day journey when the future writer was about five years old. At age 15, he attended the University of Georgia before transferring to the newly founded University of Alabama. He passed the bar in Alabama and became a practicing lawyer at age 21; he served as the state's Attorney General for several months in 1836. He later served as a state legislator, even taking the role of Speaker of the House for a time.

Meek was also a writer and orator. He wrote several poems inspired by his experience as a Southerner, and also founded or edited a handful of periodicals with the intention of promoting Southern literature and culture. In his 1857 book, Songs and Poems of the South, Meek noted that "the poetry of a country should be a faithful expression of its physical and moral characteristics" and using imagery "drawn from the indigenous objects of the region." After all, he said, "the Scenery infuses itself into the Song." His poem "The Rose of Alabama":

I loved, in boyhood's happy time,
When life was like a minstrel's rhyme,
And cloudless as my native clime,
                The Rose of Alabama.
             Oh, lovely rose!
             The sweetest flower earth knows,
                Is the Rose of Alabama!

One pleasant, balmy night in June,
When swung, in silvery clouds, the moon,
My heart awoke love's vesper tune,
             For Rose of Alabama!

She caught the strain, and to the bower,
Impelled by love and music's power,
Stole like an angel, at that hour,
             The Rose of Alabama!

Beside me there her form she placed,
My arm stole gently 'round her waist,
And earth seemed with new beauty graced,
             By Rose of Alabama!

The breeze and streamlet ceased their tone;
Like winged gems the fire-flies shone;
The flowers gazed envious on my own
             Sweet Rose of Alabama!

'Tis vain our mutual vows to tell—
One strain upon my plaintive shell,
And then I bade a sad farewell
             To Rose of Alabama!

Long years have passed; by fortune driven,
I wander 'neath a stranger heaven;
But, ah! love's ties are not yet riven
             From Rose of Alabama!

Hope smiles upon my pilgrim way,
Ere long my feet shall homeward stray,
And time bring round my nuptial day
             With Rose of Alabama!

Then, shrine-like, in my native land,
Love's Eden! shall my cottage stand,
With happiness on every hand!
             Sweet Rose of Alabama!

Brith of Appleton: deeply, darkly, beautifully blue

Thomas Gold Appleton was born in Boston on March 31, 1812, though he rarely stayed in one place after. The day after his 21st birthday in 1833, he joined his family on a trip to Europe. It was his first major experience as a traveler. It immediately had a profound impact on him. As he wrote at the time:

The air exhilarated, the waters sparkled, and the bell rang. Handkerchiefs waved, hands were kissed, and we were off. The weather was so fine that the little steamer was filled with a delightful party of girls, ladies, and other passengers... In the evening the moon rose full and cloudless, the sun setting in the west in a sheet of crimson. We conversed and promenaded till eleven, and then retired to our berths.

A few days later, he continued his journal:

The sea a most beautiful sight; lying in shifting light and shadow, "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue"—that blue which I had heard of, but never saw before. The water hissed and simmered as we clove its ridges, running off from the sides in long, undulating sheets of foam, with partial breaks of the most exquisite beryl tint. I have leaned this morning hours on the taffrail, gazing at the stir and tumult, the many beautiful shapes of the wreathed spray, or watching the effects of light and shadow— light which makes the distant billows look like a twisted and wrinkled strip of tin-foil, and shadow that gives to the sharp edge of the horizon the hue and outline of a hacked carving-knife. Excuse the romance of the similes, for their truth.

In his adult years, he called either Boston or Cambridge his home, though he was equally likely to be found in New York, or at sea (particularly the summer home in Nahant, Massachusetts that he shared with his brother-in-law Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and family).  Later, he also traveled to Palestine and Syria (a trip which inspired his book Syrian Sunshine).

A painter, poet, essayist, and travel writer, Appleton was particularly well-known among the New England literati. Today, little of his work is remembered, though he is recognized for his philanthropy: he was a trustee in the early years of both the Boston Public Library and Museum of Fine Arts in that city. His family wealth allowed him to experience culture, learning, and art and hoped others could share in the experience. Appleton was also recognized for his wit. He is credited with the the line that "All good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." Further, on his deathbed in 1884, he reportedly looked forward to whatever happened next by noting, "it will be a new experience."

The Croakers: had New York by the ears

Avaunt, arch enemy of fun,
Grim nightmare of the mind!
Which way, great Momus, shall I run,
A refuge safe to find?
My puppy's dead; Miss Rumor's breath
Is stopt for lack of news,
And F*** is almost hyp'ed to death,
And Lang has got the blues...

I'm sick of General Jackson's toast,
Canals are nought to me,
Nor do I care who rules the roast,
Clinton or John Targee:
No stick in any bank I own,
I fear no lottery shark,
And if the Battery were gone,
I'd ramble in the park...

In vain! for like a cruel cat
That sucks a child to death,
Or like a Madagascar bat
Who poisons with his breath:
The fiend, the fiend is on me still;
Come, Doctor, here's your pay,
What lotion, potion, plaster, pill,
Will drive the beast away?

It's hard to imagine how such an innocuous piece of poetic doggerel could have caused such a sensation in New York when "To Ennui" was published in the New York Evening Post on March 10, 1819. The five stanzas poked fun at current events, including those in opposition to Governor De Witt Clinton and the building of the Erie Canal. Perhaps it sparked interest in part because a response was published two days later, kick-staring a series of humorous back and forth in the pages of several New York periodicals. Most importantly, when interest was piqued, the two authors refused to be identified, even to their editors. Instead, they relied only on the moniker "The Croakers" — though the name "F***" in the first stanza almost gave it away.

In fact, the series was written by Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck, two of the earliest of the "Knickerbocker" group of writers. As one contemporary noted, the two "had New York by the ears." The second stanza alludes to "F***" (or, less subtly, "Fitz" in later editions) being "hyp'ed," a popular reference to hypochondria. In fact, Halleck was suffering from depression which only worsened after Drake's death about a year after the Croakers series began. As the series continued, the duo attacked local politicians, artists, businessmen, and even editors and publishers.

Some have suggested (with good evidence) that Halleck was secretly in love with Drake. After Drake's early death, Halleck even suggested the two should be buried side-by-side. A decade later, in 1830, Halleck concluded the Croakers series with one final croak (though he himself did not croak  until 1867).

Birth of Mathews: Man of the Future!

Perhaps no man who was once so influential is now so forgotten as Cornelius Mathews, born October 28, 1817 in Port Jefferson, New York. He was a journalist, an editor, a poet, a novelist, and a leading member of the Young America movement centered in New York. Perhaps his greatest claim to contemporary fame, however, was his demand for a distinctly American identity, one which could be reflected in literature, as a break-away from Old World ties.

To Mathews, the major problems of the day were the lack of international copyright and the wholesale piracy of foreign books. Stifling the American author financially, he said, would also ruin American creativity. Yet, a focus on books would doom an American to "the tranquility of a sure, though not always a speedy, oblivion." All authors ("any hand that has ever raised a pen"), Mathews hopes, will understand that the problems of literature in America are worth solving, however, and he urges writers to continue writing: "Let whoever can speak and write go on, in the stout heart and hopeful spirit, writing and uttering what Nature teaches. He will not, even in so great a din, be altogether unheard." From his poem, "The Reformer":

Man of the Future! on the eager headland standing,
  Gazing far off into the outer sea,
Thine eye, the darkness and the billows rough commanding,
  Beholds a shore, bright as the Heaven itself may be;
    Where temples, cities, homes and haunts of men,
  Orchards and fields spread out in orderly array,
    Invite the yearning soul to thither flee,
And there to spend in boundless peace its happier day...

But, the reformer is sudden borne "by passion" and "earnest thought" to a place where earth and heaven meet. There, he learns his new duty: to deliver the truth to his fellow men. But first, he must "seize by its horns the shaggy Past," and cast its carcass into the abyss. Even despite this violent image, Mathews warns, the truth will come slowly. As such, the reformer is told not to beat down "the 'stablished bulwarks" but allow kindness to soften the transition.

Wake not at midnight and proclaim the day,
When lightning only flashes o'er the way:
Pauses and starts and strivings towards an end,
Are not a birth, although a god's birth they portend.
  Be patient therefore like the old broad earth
    That bears the guilty up, and through the night
    Conducts them gently to the dawning light—
Thy silent hours shall have as great a birth!

By the dawn's early light

British ships had been bombarding Baltimore's Fort McHenry the entire night but, in the early morning hours of September 14, 1814, the lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key saw that the American flag still waved above the fort. Key had been dispatched earlier to negotiate the release of American prisoners; though the request was granted, the British would not release their prisoners until after the battle. Key had watched helplessly from the sea as Fort McHenry was bombed. Proud that his fellow Americans had not given up, he began writing a poem about this key battle in the War of 1812 that morning. Originally named "The Defense of Fort McHenry," the poem soon became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and, sung to the tune of a drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven," it became the National Anthem in March 1931.

O! Say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
  What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
  O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming!
And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there;
  O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep
  Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep
  As it fitfully blows, half-conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam;
Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
  'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is the band who so vauntingly swore,
  Mid the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country they'd leave us no more?
  Their blood hath wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution;
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
  And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freeman shall stand
  Between our loved home and the war's desolation;
Bless'd with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land
  Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In God is our trust,"
  And thestar-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Birth of Wallis: the gates of your prison

Born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 8, 1816, Severn Teackle Wallis lived a varied life as a lawyer, politician, Spanish scholar, and poet. By 1841, Wallis was granted an honorary doctorate from St. Mary's College after earning both bachelor's and master's degrees there. He worked as a lawyer with William Wirt for a time before publishing two books on Spain.

As the country spiraled towards Civil War, Wallis gave speeches proclaiming the need to keep the Union intact; he found no issue with the institution of slavery. After the Pratt Street Riots, Wallis was one of the men who met with Abraham Lincoln to convince the President not to allow federal troops to pass through Baltimore again. It was during this chaotic time that Wallis was elected to the state legislature in Maryland. Shortly after, the Union Army arrested several Maryland officials, including Wallis, who was imprisoned first at Fort McHenry before eventual transfer to Fort Warren in Boston. He was finally released in November 1862 — a year and two months after his arrest. He wrote his poem "In Fort Warren" when other prisoners (including Confederate officers) were released:

The anchors are weighed, and the gates of your prison
Fall wide, as your ship gives her prow to the foam,
And a few hurried hours shall return you, exulting,
Where the flag you have fought for floats over your home.

God send that not long may its folds be uplifted
O'er fields dark and sad with the trail of the fight;
God give it the triumph He always hath given,
Or sooner or later, to Valor and Right!

But if Peace may not yet wreathe your brows with her olive,
And new victims are still round her altar to bleed,
God shield you amid the red bolts of the battle,
God give you stout hearts for high thought and brave deed!

No need we should bid you go strike for your freedom—
Ye have stricken, like men, for its blessings, before;
And your homes and your loved ones, your wrongs and your manhood,
Will nerve you to fight the good fight, o'er and o'er!

But will ye not think, as ye wave your glad banners,
How the flag of Old Maryland, trodden in shame,
Lies, sullied and torn, in the dust of her highways,
And will ye not strike a fresh blow in her name?

Her mothers have sent their first-born to be with you,
Wherever with blood there are fields to be won;
Her daughters have wept for you, clad you, and nursed you,
Their hopes, and their vows, and their smiles, are your own!

Let her cause be your cause, and whenever the war-cry
Bids you rush to the field, oh! remember her too;
And when Freedom and Peace shall be blended in Glory,
Oh! count it your shame, if she be not with you!

And if, in the hour when pride, honor, and duty
Shall stir every throb in the hearts of brave men,
The wrongs of the helpless can quicken such pulses,
Let the captives at Warren give flame to them then!

Irving and Scott: dream or delirium

On September 1, 1817, Washington Irving wrote to his brother from Abbotsford, the Scotland home of Walter Scott. Armed only with a letter of introduction, the young Irving had dropped by only to see if the author of works like Waverley and Rob Roy (though he was then more known for his poetry) would even consider a meeting. Imagine his surprise when "the glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the gate, [and] took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as if we were old friends." In fact, though strangers, Scott invited Irving to stay at his home for several days. About halfway through that experience, Irving wrote to his brother:

I cannot tell how truly I have enjoyed the hours I have passed here. They fly by too quick, yet each is loaded with story, incident, or song; and when I consider the world of ideas, images, and impressions that have been crowded upon my mind since I have been here, it seems incredible that I should only have been two days at Abbotsford. I have rambled about the hills with Scott... and have been in a kind of dream or delirium.

As for Scott himself, Irving referred to him as "a sterling golden-hearted old worthy," and praised his youthful joy and imagination, mingled with charming simplicity "that puts you at ease with him in a moment." Scott was 12 years older than Irving, though his marked limp and gait made him appear older. He was working on Rob Roy at the time, as well as on Abbotsford itself, which was not quite complete. Scott was no less impressed by his young American admirer. He wrote that the man who provided Irving's letter of introduction deserved his gratitude: "Tell him, with my best love, that I have to thank him for making me known to Mr. Washington Irving, who is one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."

It was with Scott's help that Irving was able to publish the British edition the British edition of his Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon with publisher John Murray, which begun a long and lucrative partnership.

*This meeting, as well as the many others Irving shared throughout Europe, is best described in the book Washington Irving: An American Original by Brian Jay Jones, newly available in paperback. Brian has written a guest post for the American Literary Blog describing Washington Irving's relationship with his brother Peter.

Canning: the Peasant Bard

In Gill, Massachusetts, Josiah D. Canning was born on August 31, 1816 (the family had changed the name from Cannon). Though his brothers had the benefit of a college education, young Josiah himself did not. Nevertheless, at age 15, he took his first steps towards a literary career when he built his own printing press and started producing a weekly newspaper. In its first six months, the four-page Village Post featured exceptional coverage of gruesome or violent news. After its second year, the newspaper expanded and began to include poetry — including poems by Canning himself.

Within only a few years, Canning founded or worked with newspapers in Detroit, the Wisconsin Territory, and what is now Wheeling, West Virginia, all to varying degrees of success. Ultimately returning to Massachusetts, he abandoned journalistic pursuits and became a farmer — a role which instantly became his greatest poetic inspiration.

Upon the publication of his book Poems, New York editor Lewis Gaylord Clark announced enthusiastically: "Make way for a farmer's boy... who draws his figures from ever-glorious nature!" It was Clark who bestowed upon Canning the nickname "Peasant Bard."

Canning's poem "Night Watch — August 31":

O thou to whom the rolling years
   Are moments of our time;
Thou whose existence, lone, appears
   Eternal and sublime!

I see Thy star-bespangled sky,
   Thy comet-torches shine,
And wonder if Thine awful eye
   Can notice me or mine!

I hear Thy voice in thunder fill
   The caverns of the sky,
And wonder if the prayer I will
   Comes to Thy hearing nigh.

I see Thy whirling breath uptwist
   And dash the forest down;
And think, how futile to resist
   The anger of Thy frown!

I gaze upon the fields of space
   No mortal foot hath trod,
And in the awful Boundless, trace
   The mystery of God.