Death of George Arnold: a wasted life

Though scarcely remembered today, the poet George Arnold was mourned by many when he died on November 3, 1865. A contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair, Arnold often wrote under the pseudonym "McArone," with works that crossed a variety of styles and genres but, mostly, he was a humorist.

When he died at age 31, those who remembered him included the group that frequented Pfaff's, a bar in Manhattan known for its Bohemian clientele of artists and writers. For that group, he allegedly first presented one of his most anthologized poems, an ode to beer. One of those who frequented the establishment was Walt Whitman, who once scuffled with Arnold over the question of the Confederacy. One account says their debate grew so heated, Arnold (who supported the secession of the Southern states) assaulted Whitman by grabbing him by the hair. In Whitman's own account, it was merely a loud argument, which resulted in the elder poet's leaving the building.

Another of those who met him at Pfaff's was artist/poet Elihu Vedder. Many years after Arnold's death, Vedder recalled, "He died young; I do not know of what he died, but he seemed to be worn out even when I first met him... He thought his life a wasted life; it was with him a gorgeous romance of youthful despair; but into that grave went a tender charm, great talent, and great weakness."

Also among the Pfaff's crowd was William Winter, who elsewhere recalled Arnold's time in the established: "[He was] one of the sweetest poets in our country who have sung the beauties of Nature and the tenderness of true love; and he never came without bringing sunshine." Winter collected Arnold's poems and published them with a biography. Editor/critic/author Edmund Clarence Stedman memorialized Arnold in verse not long after his burial at Greenwood Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey. More appropriate than Stedman's poem, however, is Arnold's own, "The Lees of Life":

   I have had my will,
Tasted every pleasure;
   I have drank my fill
Of the purple measure;
   It has lost its zest,
   Sorrow is my guest,
O, the lees are bitter, — bitter, —
   Give me rest!

   Love once filled the bowl
Running o'er with blisses,
   Made my very soul
Drunk with crimson kisses;
   But I drank it dry,
   Love has passed me by,
O, the lees are bitter, — bitter, —
   Let me die!

*Note: At least one source gives the date of Arnold's death as November 9.

Birth of Tarkington: content with their own

Although he was given the name "Newton" (after an uncle, who was governor of California) when he was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 29, 1869, he became better known by his middle name as Booth Tarkington. By the end of his life, Tarkington was a prolific novelist, short story writer, playwright, and even an illustrator, with two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction under his belt as well as a handful of honorary degrees.

An early biography of Tarkington noted that his early years and young adulthood were unlike many other writers: He was not born into poverty, nor did he struggle to make a living before being forced to use his pen to earn his bread. His father was a judge and, as a boy, young "Tark" was sent to a boarding school in New Hampshire. After two years at Purdue University, he graduated from Princeton University. A few years later, in 1899, Tarkington published his first book, A Gentleman from Indiana. It was printed as a serial in McClure's Magazine. It proved successful and was soon staged as a play.

This success was despite Willa Cather's opinion of it as "so amateurish that it will scarcely be seriously considered among literary people — outside of Indiana — and his view of life is so shallow and puerile and sophomorically sugary that grown-ups will have little patience with it." In defense of Tarkington, the book was serialized at a time when local color writing was extremely popular. Further, the founder of McClure's Magazine was Samuel S. McClure, who had been raised partly in Indiana. Tarkington's description of a slow-paced Midwestern town was likely part of the appeal. The book opens:

There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level: bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles on miles with not one cool hill slope away from the sun. The persistent tourist who seeks for signs of man in this sad expanse perceives a reckless amount of rail fence; at intervals a large barn; and, here and there, man himself, incurious, patient, slow, looking up from the fields apathetically as the Limited flies by. Widely separated from each other are small frame railway stations—sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates that somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin cottages are grouped about a couple of brick stores...

Only one street attained to the dignity of a name—Main Street, which formed the north side of the Square... In winter, Main Street was a series of frozen gorges and hummocks; in fall and spring, a river of mud; in summer, a continuing dust heap; it was the best street in Plattville.

The people lived happily; and, while the world whirled on outside, they were content with their own.

Birth of Ida B. Wells: with its joys and sorrows

Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862. Before she was even a year old, however, she was emancipated by Abraham Lincoln. Her parents, who were also freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, encouraged education in their children (her father was a trustee of what is now Rust College). However, her parents died when she was a teenager, and young Ida dropped out of college to became a schoolteacher in order to earn enough money to support her siblings.

Wells eventually moved the family to Tennessee, and there experienced segregation and the effects of racism stronger than before. In September 1883, she refused to move from the first class cabin of the train to the smokers' cabin. Though she won a lawsuit against the company, she lost on a later appeal. She sued again after a similar incident and again won initially but, this time, it was the state's supreme court that overturned the verdict.

The incidents fueled her desire to do something to attack the problem of racism and she soon switched careers from educator to journalist. She wrote for newspapers in Tennessee, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and others, writing directly about racial problems including poor funding for black schools and the horror of lynchings. She was soon labeled a troublemaker; others, however, called her "Princess of the Press." Eventually, she was owner and editor of her own newspaper, Free Speech. Once, in 1892, while away from the office, her building was ransacked by her enemies. She was undeterred, and Ida B. Wells had a lengthy career as a journalist, author, and public speaker.

An entry from her diary on her 25th birthday, July 16, 1887, shows the high standards she set for herself even at that young age:

This morning I stand face to face with twenty five years of life, that ere the day is gone will have passed me by forever. The experiences of a quarter of a century of life are my own, beginning with this, for me, new year... Within the last ten [years] I have suffered more, learned more, lost more than I ever expect to, again. In the last decade, I've only begun to live — to know life as a whole with its joys and sorrows. Today I write these lines with a heart overflowing with thankfulness to My Heavenly Father for His wonderful love & kindness... When I turn to sum up my own accomplishments I am not so well pleased. I have not used the opportunities I had to my best advantage and find myself intellectually lacking... Twenty-five years old today! May another 10 years find me increased in honesty & purity of purpose & motive!

*Information, including the passage above, comes from The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1994 edition), edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis.

Warfield: Such was Destiny's decree!

Catherine Anne Warfield, born in Missisippi in 1816, was popular in her native South as both a poet and writer of fiction. After her marriage, she moved to Kentucky and there lived through the Civil War. From her home of Beechmore, she wrote her poem "Drowned, Drowned" on June 15, 1867 (the title references a line in Shakespeare's Hamlet). The poem compares the struggle of the Confederate Army with diving for pearls and, like much of the Southern poetry of the period, elevates these veterans to angelic status in sentimental, patriotic verse:

In the dark Confederate sea
Rest the heroes of our race;
O'er them waves are sweeping free,
And the pearls of ocean trace
Temples, where the helm should be,
Worn with high heroic grace.
'Twas a desperate strife at best,
And they perished—let them rest
In their silent burial place!—

When our divers, dreading nought,
Plunged to depths, through ocean whirls,
It was all their hope and thought,
To bear back those precious pearls,
Passion freighted, Beauty fraught,
Such as gleam 'mid glowing curls,
Or on baldrick and on banner,
In the old heroic manner,
Broidered all, by high-born girls.

But the divers came no more
From that dark Confederate sea,
With its ceaseless muffled roar,
And its billows sweeping free,
And the pearls were never gathered,
And the storms were never weathered.
Such was Destiny's decree!—
Quench the tear, and stay the sigh,
Nothing now can these avail;

They who nobly strive and die,
Over Fate itself prevail.
Give to those, who on the shore
Wait for sires who come no more,
Shelter from the surf and gale.
Spread the board and trim the hearth,
For the orphans of our race,
Lift from weariness and dearth,
Each young drooping form and face,
Light anew the olden fires
Won from high heroic sires,
And may God bestow his grace!

Death of O'Hara: free from anguish now

Born and raised in Kentucky, Theodore O'Hara had a varied career as a lawyer, journalist, soldier, and poet. The Civil War broke out while he was the editor of a newspaper in Mobile, Alabama, and he immediately enlisted in the Confederate Army. Though his exemplary service was recognized, particularly with his previous stint in the Army in his 20s, he was refused promotions for being too outspoken and, particularly, for his criticism of President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he settled again in Alabama, where he died on June 6, 1867. He was originally buried in that state, before being re-interred in his native Kentucky.

O'Hara's greatest claim to fame is a poem about death, written during the Mexican-American War. "Bivouac of the Dead" has since been quoted in memorial markers and plaques in over a dozen cemeteries, including Arlington National Cemetery. Originally written to honor Kentuckians who died, it has since been read as a general lament for those who are killed in battle. From that poem:

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
The brave and daring few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumour of the foe's advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow's strife
The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed;
Their haughty banner trailed in dust
Is now their martial shroud,
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And their proud forms in battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.

...
Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood you gave,
No impious footsteps here shall tread
The herbage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless songs shall tell,
When many a vanished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, or winter's blight
Not Time's remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of holy light
That gilds your glorious tomb.

Lucy Larcom's labor of love

I find that people are imagining I have been very industrious this winter, by the way they talk about my new book, which they suppose is something original. I don't want to give wrong impressions in that way, as the selections are more valuable on their own account than mine.

So wrote Lucy Larcom to publisher James T. Fields from Beverly, Massachusetts on May 20, 1866. The book in question was already receiving a little hype, though not yet officially announced. Titled Breathings of the Better Life when published the next year, it was not a book written by Larcom, but edited by her. The book compiled several prose sketches and poems, including several anonymous works and a few traditional hymns. All the selections follow a theme: finding inspiration in saints and Biblical quotes to apply to contemporary life. As Larcom described it, these are "voices that cannot fail to inspire the traveller struggling upward to a better life." Still, she told Fields, "It has been altogether a labor of love with me."

In fact, Larcom wanted to remove herself from the book as much as possible in the hopes of letting the content speak for itself. In her letter to Fields, she asked her name by listed only as "Miss Larcom" — or, better still, even less obtrusively as "L. L." She also emphasized to Fields that the book had to have the lowest cover price possible. Though the final publication did include her full name, the preface in the book carefully ascribed its purpose: an inexpensive book for those who did not have a large library, in a portable size that could be taken to "the workshop, the camp, or the sick-room," and serve like "the presence of a friend." Larcom goes on:

The soul, cramped among the petty vexations of earth, needs to keep its windows constantly open to the invigorating air of large and free ideas: and what thought is so grand as that of an ever-present God, in whom all that is vital in humanity breathes and grows? The want of every human being is a wider expansion to receive from Him, and to give of His; fuller inspirations and outbreathings of that Spirit by which man is created anew in Him, a living soul.

Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous. To forget self, to keep the heart buoyant with the thought of God, and to pour forth this continual influx of spiritual health heavenward in praise, and earthward in streams of blessing, — this is the essence of human, saintly, and angelic joy; the genuine Christ-life, the one life of the saved, on earth or in heaven.

The book includes both prose and poetry. Few of the listings include the full name of the author, but some are recognizable: Edmund Hamilton Sears, Henry Ward Beecher, and Larcom's friend John Greenleaf Whittier. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former minister, was represented by this excerpt from his long poem "Threnody":

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show,—
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned, —
Saying, "What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again."

Rebecca Harding Davis: a modern story

Rebecca Harding Davis submitted her manuscript for "David Gaunt" to James T. Fields, editor and publisher of The Atlantic Monthly and co-owner of Ticknor and Fields publishing house, on May 14, 1862. Davis, or, rather Miss Harding at the time, was also looking for affirmation for what she called "a very abolition story" and asked Fields if it would meet a "cordial welcome." While writing the work, she had been preparing for a visit to the Northeast to meet Fields and other literary notables in New England before passing through Philadelphia (where she would meet her future husband L. Clarke Davis). She worried that, if her latest work was not well received, the author would be equally poorly received. She was willing, she offered, to skip her trip and stay at home in Wheeling, [West] Virginia "and write something else."

But Davis was somewhat baiting Fields, the man who had a year earlier published her novella and landmark in literary realism Life in the Iron Mills. The work proved popular and Davis was being courted by another publisher — a fact which she revealed to Fields. If she could write something about the current Civil War, this publisher offered liberal payment. She was only then becoming aware that Ticknor and Fields had been more than stingy in publishing her book Margaret Howth, which also proved a solid seller. "What do you think?" she asked Fields. "Had I better still abide by the old flag? meaning T&F?" Within days, Fields sent payment for "David Gaunt" and it was published beginning in the September 1862 issue as the lead article. Still, she warned him: "Don't leave any thing out of it in publishing it... deformity is better than a scar you know."

"David Gaunt" follows the titular character, a Calvinist minister with a blind patriotism who has difficulty understanding the realities of war. It also follows a female character named Thoedora and her repressed life in conservative rural Virginia (representing "the drift of most women's lives"). Both characters, ordinary American residents generally outside of politics, find themselves on different sides of the issue of slavery, and are forced to redefine their lives amidst the harsh Civil War. From the first chapter of the story:

What kind of sword, do you think, was that which old Christian had in that famous fight of his with Apollyon, long ago? He cut the fiend to the marrow with it, you remember, at last; though the battle went hardly with him, too, for a time. Some of his blood, [John] Bunyan says, is on the stones of the valley to this day. That is a vague record of the combat between the man and the dragon in that strange little valley, with its perpetual evening twilight and calm, its meadows crusted with lilies, its herd-boy with his quiet song, close upon the precincts of hell. It fades back, the valley and the battle, dim enough, from the sober freshness of this summer morning. Look out of the window here, at the hubbub of the early streets, the freckled children racing past to school, the dewy shimmer of yonder willows in the sunlight, like drifts of pale green vapor. Where is Apollyon? does he put himself into flesh and blood, as then, nowadays? And the sword which Christian used, like a man, in his deed of derring-do?

Reading the quaint history, just now, I have a mind to tell you a modern story. It is not long: only how, a few months ago, a poor itinerant, and a young girl, (like these going by with baskets on their arms,) who lived up in these Virginia hills, met Evil in their lives, and how it fared with them: how they thought that they were in the Valley of Humiliation, that they were Christian, and Rebellion and Infidelity Apollyon; the different ways they chose to combat him; the weapons they used. I can tell you that; but you do not know — do you ? — what kind of sword old Christian used, or where it is, or whether its edge is rusted.

I must not stop to ask more, for these war-days are short, and the story might be cold before you heard it.

*For information in this post, I am heavily indebted to Sharon M. Harris's Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (1991).

Thy faith is changed to sight

When Rev. Francis E. Butler, Chaplain of the New Jersey 25th Regiment, died on May 3, 1863, having been fatally wounded at the siege of Suffolk, Virginia, during the Civil War, his acquaintance Alfred Gibbs Campbell was devastated. Campbell, like Butler, was from New Jersey, as well as a published poet. Though he was himself born free in the North, Campbell frequently used his writing to voice his strong abolitionist stance and became vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His poem to Butler, simply titled "In Memoriam," emphasized the holy role he played as a man of faith and a religious leader for soldiers:

Soldier of Christ, no more!
    Victor—thy warfare's done.
For thee the battle's roar
    Is hushed. Thy crown is won!

Oh! not for thee our tears!
    Happy in fadeless light,
Beyond the reach of fears,
    Thy faith is changed to sight.

Thine eyes with rapture see
    Thy dear Lord face to face,
Whose life of Love in thee
    His own eye loved to trace!

Kind helper of God's poor!
    Friend of the friendless one!
Thy memory shall endure
    While suns their courses run;

And bright thy crown shall be
    With living jewels set!
Souls won to Christ by thee
    Adorn thy coronet!

And yet our tears will flow,
    As we our loss recall:
How can we let thee go,
    Brother and friend of all?

Fort Pillow: dabbled clots of brain and gore

The Battle at Fort Pillow in April 1864 was immediately controversial. The Confederate Army, led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest, attempted to regain the Tennessee fort which was protected by some 600 Union soldiers. About half of those Union solders were black. Forrest and his troops easily stormed the fort.  Union troops were slaughtered by the Confederates, despite offers of surrender, and reports claimed that Confederates more heavily targeted black soldiers who were killed in cold blood.

James Ryder Randall, a Maryland-born poet who had come to hate the "Northern scum," published a poem about the controversial battle/massacre, responding to criticism from Union supporters against Confederate savagery. His poem, "At Fort Pillow,"was published in the Wilmington (North Carolina) Journal on April 25, 1864:

You shudder as you think upon
    The carnage of the grim report —
The desolation when we won
    The inner trenches of the fort.

But there are deeds you may not know
    That scourge the pulses into strife;
Dark memories of deathless woe
    Pointing the bayonet and knife.

Randall instead points to the merciless and savage acts of Union soldiers, who had previously encamped at a church in Point Coupee, Louisiana. Randall had lived in that town while teaching at Poydras College. The church was desecrated by these troops, as was the graveyard surrounding it, including the grave of Randall's mother (or, perhaps, a less literal and more generic mother).

The house is ashes, where I dwelt
    Beyond the mighty inland sea;
The tombstones shattered where I knelt
    By that old Church in Pointe Coupee.

The Yankee fiend! that came with fire,
    Camped on the consecrated sod,
And trampled in the dust and mire
    The Holy Eucharist of God!

The spot where darling mother sleeps,
    Beneath the glimpse of yon sad moon,
Is crushed with splintered marble heaps
    To stall the horse of some dragoon!

Recalling that story, Randall writes, makes his "frantic spirit wince." But, worse is an implied crime against his sister. Without saying it outright, Randall refers to his sister being raped by a Union soldier

The tears are hot upon my face
    When thinking what bleak fate befell
The only sister of our race —
    A thing too horrible to tell.

They say that, ere her senses fled,
    She rescue of her brothers cried;
Then feebly bowed her stricken head,
    Too pure to live thus — so she died.

Though he was not present, Randall claims he continues to hear his sisters screams for help, "as perpetual as the air." It leads him to wrath and he claims he has killed Union soldiers for revenge. Here, Randall (or, more accurately, the narrator of the poem) comes to represent the entire Confederacy, and that revenge for the above atrocities inspired the massacre at Fort Pillow. He happily celebrates his "deadly rifle, sharpened brand," that causes the enemy to "writhe and bleed." Randall's poem, then, justifies responding to violence with more violence. More than that, Randall's poem highlights the fury of war as well as its gore, even while claiming he particularly targeted not the black soldiers, as was believed of Fort Pillow, but whites, though both races are dehumanized as demon targets:

The Southern yell rang loud and high
    The moment that we thundered in,
Smiting the demons hip and thigh,
    Cleaving them to the very chin.

My right arm bared for fiercer play,
    The left one held the rein in slack;
In all the fury of the fray
    I sought the white man, not the black.

The dabbled clots of brain and gore
    Across the swirling sabres ran;
To me each brutal visage bore
    The front of one accursed man.

Throbbing along the frenzied vein,
    My blood seemed kindled into song —
The death-dirge of the sacred slain,
    The slogan of immortal wrong.

It glared athwart the dripping glaives,
    It blazed in each avenging eye —
The thought of desecrated graves
    And some lone sister's desperate cry. 

Caroline Kirkland: I make my humble curtsey

Caroline Mathilda Stansbury Kirkland died on April 6, 1864, with a cause of death reported as apoplexy. She was perfectly healthy only a few days earlier, and her death was a surprise to many.

Born in New York, Kirkland moved west to Michigan with her family in 1837 where they founded a town. The project was financially unsuccessful and they returned to New York by the mid 1840s. The experience, however, inspired her first two books:  A New Home—Who'll Follow? (under the pseudonym Mary Clavers) and Forest Life. Her view of the experience in her books was quite negative, as she depicted Michigan as a blighted Eden. The first book in particular stirred controversy when locals in Michigan recognized themselves lampooned in the book. From her preface:

I claim for these straggling and cloudy crayon sketches of life and manners in the remoter parts of Michigan the merit of general truth of outline. Beyond this I venture not to aspire. I felt somewhat tempted to set forth my little book as being entirely—what it is very nearly—a veritable history; an unimpeachable transcript of reality; a rough picture, in detached parts, but pentagraphed from the life; a sort of 'Emigrant's Guide;'—considering with myself that these my adventurous journeyings and tarryings beyond the confines of civilization might fairly be held to confer the traveller's privilege. But conscience prevailed, and I must honestly confess, that there be glosses, and colorings, and lights, if not shadows, for which the author is alone accountable. Journals, published entire and unaltered, should be Parthian darts, sent abroad only when one's back is turned. To throw them in the teeth of one's everyday associates might diminish one's popularity rather inconveniently. I would desire the courteous reader to bear in mind, however, that whatever is quite unnatural, or absolutely incredible, in the few incidents which diversify the following pages, is to be received as literally true. It is only in the most common-place parts (if there be comparisons) that I have any leasing-making to answer for... And with such brief salvo, I make my humble curtsey. 

Back in New York, Kirkland founded a school for girls and joined the local literary community. Her home often hosted various gatherings of literary figures.

Kirkland was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, alongside her husband, William Kirkland, a former professor at Hamilton College and assistant editor of the New York Evening Mirror. After his death in 1846, her writing became a main source of income.

Melville: A city in flags for a city in flames

Confederate leaders had already abandoned Richmond, Virginia, when Union soldiers entered the city and raised the American flag on April 3, 1865. At the time, author Herman Melville had been mostly out of the limelight, in part because of his growing cynicism towards the publishing industry and, more generally, the American reading public. Still, the fall of Richmond, he recalled, originated "an impulse" in him to write again. The result was not the novels for which he was known, but poetry. His collection, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, was published in 1866; it received virtually no attention. In that collection is "The Fall of Richmond," a poem subtitled "the tidings received in the Northern Metropolis":

What mean these peals from every tower,
   And crowds like seas that sway?
The cannon reply; they speak the heart
   Of the People impassioned, and say—
A city in flags for a city in flames,
   Richmond goes Babylon's way—
                   Sing and pray.

O weary years and woeful wars,
   And armies in the grave;
But hearts unquelled at last deter
   The helmed dilated Lucifer—
Honor to Grant the brave,
   Whose three stars now like Orion's rise
When wreck is on the wave—
                   Bless his glaive.

Well that the faith we firmly kept,
   And never our aim forswore
For the Terrors that trooped from each recess
   When fainting we fought in the Wilderness,
And Hell made loud hurrah,
   But God is in Heaven, and Grant in the Town,
And Right through might is Law—
                   God's way adore.

In the book's preface, Melville admitted that they did little justice to the complicated nature of the Civil War: "The aspects which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance," he wrote. "Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which wayward winds have played upon the strings."

More than that, many scholars have seen an ironic or embittered view of the war in Melville's poetry. In the case of "The Fall of Richmond," his over-the-top rhetoric borders on satirical, as in his reference to the Confederacy as "helmed dilated Lucifer." The subtitle reminds us, however, that such a perspective is one-sided. Further, the poem and its prayer-like italicized sections seems innocent at first reading but actually paints a picture of a population calling for blood: the cannon speaks their collective heart, for example, despite their constant swaying (as in their opinions or loyalties). Hell has come to Earth by the final stanza, and "Right through might is Law" is incongruously connected to adoring "God's way" in the last line. Other poems in the book focus on specific battles of the Civil War, including the more famous "Shiloh: A Requiem."

Death of Sparks: wide and beneficent influence

"The name of Jared Sparks is intimately associated with the historical literature of this country," began the obituary of historian Jared Sparks, who died of pneumonia on March 14, 1866. He was 76 years old. The obituary added, "He has exerted a wide and beneficent influence; he has finished a good work and gained for himself a brilliant renown." He was also, for a time, chaplain for Congress and, later, President of Harvard University.

Perhaps Sparks's most well-known work today is his biographies of George Washington. To complete the work, he sought out original documents, including letters and whatever first-hand testimony he could find. First published as a multi-volume Life and Letters of George Washington beginning in 1834, a simplified and abridged version was published as Life of George Washington in 1842. He also wrote books or articles on a variety of other figures associated with the American Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin, John Andre, Benedict Arnold, Charles Lee, and Anthony Wayne.

Sparks chose to focus on the origins of the country because of what he considered a contentious contemporary period in American politics. Looking to the past, he said, was "the polestar to which all may look for safety." Perhaps so, but Sparks also took liberties in writing about the Revolution and its major figures by creating an illusion of perfect harmony. One contemporary wrote that Sparks was guilty of "flagrant literary misdemeanour" by re-wording much of the correspondence he used as a source for his own writing. After his death, one critic noted that Sparks had "altered" and "embellished" Washington's letters to  ensure that the historical figure matched the presumed dignity and character that fit Sparks's purpose of harmony. Consider this excerpt titled "American History":

Besides a love of adventure, and an enthusiasm that surrounded every difficulty, the character of its founders was marked by a hardy enterprise and sturdiness of purpose, which carried them onward through perils and sufferings, that would have appalled weaker minds and less resolute hearts. This is the first great feature of resemblance in all the early settlers, whether they came to the north or to the south, and it merits notice from the influence it could not fail to exercise on their future acts and character, both domestic and politic.  The timid, the wavering, the feeble-minded, the sons of indolence and ease, were not among those who left the comforts of home, braved the tempests of the ocean, and sought danger on the shores of an unknown and inhospitable world.

Enduring his final illness, Sparks was surrounded by family and friends. His friends insisted his final days were "painless and placid". His children recorded among his last words, "Strive to do good and you will bring it to pass." His substantial collection of manuscripts and books were donated to Harvard.

Harte on King: a star was falling

Thomas Starr King had been preaching in San Francisco, California, only for about four years before he died on March 4, 1864. A dynamic character, he was as influential in the pulpit as he was at more secular podiums. One of the many affected by King's death at age 39 was author Bret Harte who, like King, was born in New York state before making his way to California. Harte dedicated a poem to King as an obituary which he called "Relieving Guard":

Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho!
How passed the night through thy long waking?"
"Cold, cheerless, dark, — as may befit
The hour before the dawn is breaking."

"No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save
The plover from the marshes calling,
And in yon western sky, about
An hour ago, a star was falling."

"A star? There's nothing strange in that."
"No, nothing; but above the thicket,
Somehow it seemed to me that God
Somewhere had just relieved a picket." 

Harte purposely used military imagery in honoring this minister, in part because King had involved himself heavily in politics, urging Californians to stay with the Union. The title, "Relieving Guard," helps make the connection between the role of a soldier and the role of a minister, as well. Moreover, the poem's simplicity belies the complexity in its imagery. In its three stanzas, we see no direct reference to King, and neither do the two soldiers who are talking. Yet, somehow one of the soldiers knows that the seemingly natural phenomenon he has witness has a greater meaning. We never hear the other soldier's reaction.

Harte had known King personally, considering him a mentor of sorts, and was even aware of his illness — diphtheria — without apparently knowing how serious it was. King had worked nonstop for years and the strain only aggravated his condition. Among his last words were Psalm 23, "Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil." He was buried with a military guard. Harte would write two more poems to King and name a son after him.

W. T. Field: noble thoughts and high ideals

Walter Taylor Field was born in Illinois on February 21, 1861. He was educated in both Chicago public schools and at an academy in Iowa before attending Dartmouth and Amherst College in New England. Returning to Illinois, he became an author and poet before compiling history books and anthologies for children.

In his book Fingerposts to Children's Reading, 1907, Field offered several essays with advice for children's reading. He advocated that children read to develop their character, particularly their moral character, as well as for cultural enrichment. He gave suggestions to parents on encouraging reading, as well as tips for teachers, and anyone else interested in educated the young. As he wrote in the preface, "No one who knows and loves children can fail to appreciate the influence which noble thoughts and high ideals exercise upon the unfolding character, — and no one who knows good literature can fail to realize the wealth of joy and beauty which it holds in store for the young."

Reading, Field wrote, allows children to build their imagination and to find heroes to imitate. For that reason, he discourages reading about crime or cheap stories that offer "action and excitement" without moral lessons: "Carefully planned details of robberies and hold-ups instruct the youth how to go about the nefarious business, and inspire a wish to emulate the robbers, because they are bold and daring and always outwith the police." Instead, he offered a list of recommended reading for home libraries, public schools, public libraries, and Sunday schools.

Also, in the early 20th century, Field teamed up with the former superintendent of Chicago's public schools, Ella Flagg Young, to produce a series of age appropriate compilations called The Young and Field Literary Readers (not unlike the McGuffey Readers). In their "advanced' book, they included many American authors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Sidney Lanier. They also included the writings of historians, political figures, and public speakers, including Edward Everett, William Hickling Prescott, Francis Parkman, and Henry Clay. Other volumes included fairy tales, Native American legends, and fables from all over the world (including, impressively, Hindu fables).

Field was also, occasionally, a poet himself. His poem "January":

The dawn comes late and cold and brings no cheer;
   Blue shadows lie across the driven snow;
   Dim skies shut down upon the world below,
Save in the east, where ruddy lines appear,
Piercing the purple cloud-banks like a spear.
   Adown the road creaking wagons go;
   The teamsters beat their breasts to keep aglow;
Their frosty breath floats upward, keen and clear.

As thus I watch the coming of the day
   And think of summer suns and waving grain,
The Master Artist, at my side alway,
   Sketches with frosty pencil on the pane
Leaves, ferns and nodding flowers, as He would say,
   "Take heart, and wait. All these shall come again."

Birth of Burgess: I'll Kill you

With a name like Gelett Burgess, it shouldn't be surprising that he became a humor writer. Well, technically his first name was Frank but he dropped that name before he became an author. Born in Boston on January 30, 1866, he found life in that city a bit stifling and, after graduating from M.I.T. in 1887, moved west to San Francisco to take a job as a draftsman for a railroad company. On the west coast, Burgess became associated with a couple local newspapers before contributing to national (and international) publications. He lived overseas for a time and, eventually, he moved back to Boston.

In addition to coining the writing term "blurb," Burgess was known for a series of comical works, sometimes aimed at children, which also ranged into the territory of nonsense. His most famous work, in his lifetime and after, is a two-line bit of doggerel which came to be known as "The Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, At Least":

I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow, I'd rather see than be one!

In later publications it was broken into four lines. First published in May 1895 in a new magazine Burgess started called The Lark, the poem was surprisingly popular — especially to its author, who later resented its success. Among its avowed admirers was Theodore Roosevelt and soon Burgess became known as "the author of the Purple Cow," no matter what else he wrote. One story claims that, some 45 years later, a man in New York brought a cow dyed purple to Burgess and declared, "There, now you've seen one." Well before then, he already had it with the poem and published "Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue" in The Lark:

Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—
I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;
But I can tell you Anyhow
I'll Kill you if you Quote it!

The Tenth of January: gallery of tragedy

"Look at that girl! I’d kill myself if I looked like that!" It was meant as a whisper, but Asenath Martyn heard it anyway. She knew what she looked like: she had a hunched back and a scar across her mouth, the result of abuse from a mother who was now dead. Sene, as she was known, knew something was wrong with her simple life, living with her father in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and working for the Pemberton Mills. She loved a boarder in their home, Richard "Dick" Cross, and the two had become engaged. She had learned, however, that Cross intended to marry her only out of pity, and that he really loved Sene's friend, the pretty Del Ivory (who "counted her rejected lovers by the score"). In this case, however, Del loved Dick back.

Such is the narrative in "The Tenth of January," a short story by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, set in late 1859 and early 1860, but published in the Atlantic Monthly for March 1868. It was later collected in Men, Women, and Ghosts in 1869. What Sene and the other characters did not know, but contemporary readers certainly did, was that the real story would come to its climax on the titular date, January 10, 1860, when everyone would be killed in one of the most horrific industrial accidents in the history of the United States.

When the Pemberton Mills collapsed without warning that day, its five stories turned to rubble within a minute or so, an estimated 500 to 750 were inside — in addition to the scores that died (some charred beyond recognition), survivors were mangled or cut to pieces. Most of the victims were young girls. Charitable donations to their families amounted to $4000 within two days. In fact, on the list of victims, an "Asenath Martin" was marked as unrecovered or unidentified. Phelps describes the scene in her fictional account:

A network twenty feet high, of rods and girders, of beams, pillars, stairways, gearing, roofing, ceiling, walling; wrecks of looms, shafts, twisters, pulleys, bobbins, mules, locked and interwoven; wrecks of human creatures wedged in; a face that you know turned up at you from some pit which twenty-four hours' hewing could not open; a voice that you know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fair hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; the snow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of which other strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, and died in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales, tasted the oiled machinery, crunched the netted wood, danced on the heaped-up stone, threw its cruel arms high into the night, roared for joy at helpless firemen, and swallowed wreck, death, and life together out of your sight, — the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery of tragedy.

But Sene, Del, and Dick did not know any of this was coming. Sene had been secretly struggling with what to do about Dick; she knew it was best to cut off the engagement so that he and Del could be happy together. But that meant sacrificing her own happiness, or as little of it as she had anyway. But Phelps narrates that, "Asenath was no heroine, you see." On the morning of January 10, however, she had made a decision which left her unburdened (presumably, she would give up on Dick, but the text is not clear at this point).

She goes to work, feeling more and more settled in her decision, more at peace with God and her disfigurement... when disaster strikes. Phelps tells us that the telegraph cables spread the message far and wide, that people were swept up in the horrible news... at least temporarily, before going back to their own lives. But what of the people of Lawrence and the Pemberton Mills? What of Asenath Martyn, her father, her lover, and her friend?

One that we love may go upon battle-ground, and we are ready for the worst: we have said our goodbys; our hearts wait and pray: it is his life, not his death, which is the surprise. But that he should go out to his safe, daily, commonplace occupations, unnoticed and uncaressed, — scolded a little, perhaps, because he leaves the door open, and tells us how cross we are this morning; and they bring him up the steps by and. by, a mangled mass of death and horror,— that is hard.

Today, and in her own lifetime, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was best known for her 1868 novel The Gates Ajar and its sequels. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that "The Tenth of January" should be remembered today as one of her most powerful, most well-written, and most emotionally moving works. Her talents are on full display here: in descriptions of the town, in the relatable feelings of uncertainty in the lead character, the harrowing descriptions from inside the collapsed structure, and the gut-wrenching realism of its aftermath (not to mention the tantalizing ending). Though long for a short story, it can be read in one sitting. I can't recommend enough that today's readers take the time to do so.

Simms: our Muses reassume their powers

William Gilmore Simms refused to act like an old man. In his last full year of life, he continued working, contributing articles and poems to the newly founded Nineteenth Century magazine; he did not receive pay for his contributions but hoped to help this new organ of Southern culture. Still, he was weary. He admitted he lived only for his children (six of fifteen survived) and grandchildren (three of six were then living). Perhaps his biggest contribution in this period was a prologue written for the opening of the new Charleston Academy of Music. It earned him $55.

The address was delivered by another on December 1, 1869. "I was quite too unwell to attend the theatre at the opening," Simms wrote two days later, "but am told that the Lady who delivered the address did so with grace, spirit & propriety." On the same day, to Evert Augustus Duyckinck, Simms admitted he had not left the house in three days but heard his address was delivered "with excellent effect." The Academy, in a re-appropriated building from the 1850s, was the talk of the town. One local newspaper reported it seemed, "Everybody was going." Everybody except for Simms, apparently. In his place "a graceful blonde" named Lillie Eldridge read his poem (excerpted here from its printing in the Charleston Daily News the next day):

This once proud city, seated by the sea,
With subject realm as boundless and as free,
Though prostrate long beneath an adverse Fate
That left her homes and temples desolate,
Hath yet such wondrous gifts in sea and shore,
It needs but will her fortunes to restore;
The stern resolve; With Labor in her marts,
Hope in her homes and courage in her hearts,
To prove superior to the hostile blast,
And all repair, so glorious in her Past!

Not now in arms, but arts, we seek the strife;
The arts alone illume the paths of life;
Labor, but blindly gropes along the way,
Till Art lets in the glorious Light of Day!
'Tis she informs us with the sweet desire,
Uplifts the soul till all its wings aspire;
Trains Fancy's height, assiduous, to explore,
Our boundless realm of rock, and wood, and shore...

Such are Art's beautified toils, and such be ours!
To-night our Muses reassume their powers:
This is their temple! Bright the forms arise,
And all the world of magic fills our eyes!
There Genius comes upon his beamy car,
And lo! the crowds that gather from afar!

...To you who love the beautiful and true,
Friends of the Drama, we appeal to you!
Come with your smile, the virtuous and the wise,
And cheer the servants of the scene ye prize;
Bring fearless judgment, nail with heartiest laud;
Denounced the Wrong, and still the Right applaud;
Touch'd by the Poet's truth, embrace the True,
And be yourselves, the nobly great ye view;
Spurn shameless Vice; pluck vain presumption down,
And tear from sly Hypocrsy his gown;
Cheer infant Merit in his toilsome strife;
And crown achievement with the palm of Life;
So shall the virtues bless your name and age,
And find their noblest ally in the Stage.

Clearly, Simms saw the opening of the Academy of Music, which was really a concert hall and theater, as a stepping stone to improving the cultural literacy of the South — a cause he often considered. Particularly in the years following the Civil War, the poet/novelist hoped his fellow Southerners would make something of themselves.

Incidentally, in the month that followed, Simms was surprisingly open in discussing his ailments. In a letter to his friend and fellow Southern author Paul Hamilton Hayne, Simms admitted to having: "Dyspepsia, in its most aggravated forms,  Indigestion, Constipation, Nausea, frequent vomitings, occasional vertigo, and, as a safety valve to this, hemorrhoids." He died about six months later. The Charleston Academy of Music honored him with a tribute eight years to the month after his opening address was presented.

James reviews Whitman: a melancholy task

"It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more melancholy one to write about it." Thus opens the review of Walt Whitman's book Drum-Taps written by critic Henry James. The review, published in the November 16, 1865 issue of the Nation, lamented how difficult it was to read Whitman's poetry and James blames it on the poet being too much of "a prosaic mind." In fact, he writes, if not for the capital letters at the beginning of each line, one might not know it was poetry. "But if Mr. Whitman does not write verse," James says, "he does not write ordinary prose" as even prosaically the book is not impressive.

Worse, says the critically-minded James, Whitman, like too many others, assumes that the patriotic sympathy with the recent Civil War is enough to justify poetic inspiration in anyone. No, says James, though we as Americans feel the need to express our strong feelings ("Of course the tumult of a battle is grand, the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a theme for elegies"), but such a sweeping overview as Whitman offers can only be made after the dust has settled. James also can't help but note that the book seems equally about Whitman's own pretentious grandstanding ("Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his own trumpet").

The form of the poetry is a particular concern to the then 22-year old James as it does not rhyme or follow any conceivable pattern. Various simplistic verses on the war have become popular and memorable, even when artless. In the case of Whitman, James concludes his writing is "an offense against art," lacking common sense, and insult to intelligence. Nevertheless, James notes, there are positive aspects to Drum-Taps. The sentiment expressed, even if expressed oddly, is sincere:

Mr. Whitman prides himself especially on the substance—the life—of his poetry. It may be rough, it may be grim, it may be clumsy—such we take to be the author's argument—but it is sincere, it is sublime, it appeals to the soul of man, it is the voice of a people.

But, James warns, this is not enough. "To become adopted as a national poet, it is not enough... to discharge the undigested contents of your blotting-book into the lap of the public," he writes. "You must respect the public which you address; for it has taste, if you have not." Whitman had made note in the book, however, that the life of the poem was more important than the form. As James himself quoted, Whitman had written:

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect;
But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm'd Libertad!
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,
With joy with you, O soul of man.

Of that life, and that love, and that early doom

Henry Timrod did all he could to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. Illness forced him to leave the army, as did his attempts to serve as a war correspondent from the war front. Instead, he moved to Columbia, South Carolina and tried to live a domestic life. He married his love Katie Godwin and started a family while serving as a journalist in town.

Then, about a year after his marriage, General William Tecumseh Sherman came to South Carolina and laid waste to Timrod's town. Known as an anti-Union provocateur, Timrod went into hiding. Columbia, the state's capital city, was left in ruins. "The truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina," Sherman record. "I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her."

Months later, amid the chaos, on October 23, 1865, Timrod's son Willie died. Willie had been born that previous Christmas. With a father's pride, Timrod reported to a friend, "Everybody wonders at him! He is so transparently fair; so ethereal!" But his son's death left Timrod extremely forlorn; coupled with the destruction of his city, the loss of his job (as his newspaper ceased to exist), the Timrod family fell into poverty and despair. "[He] was the sweetest child," Timrod later wrote, "But every body thought him too ethereal to live." Even after the conclusion of the Civil War, the poet never recovered and died destitute in 1867.

Timrod's four-page poem, "Our Willie," serves both as a memorial to the boy as well as a testimonial of the poet's sinking despair. The poem concludes:

How could we speak in human phrase,
Of such scarce earthly traits and ways,
                What would not seem
                A doting dream,
In the creed of these sordid days?
                No! let us keep
                Deep, deep,
In sorrowing heart and aching brain,
This story hidden with the pain,
Which, since that blue October night
When Willie vanished from our sight,
Must haunt us even in our sleep.

In the gloom of the chamber where he died,
And by that grave which, through our care,
From Yule to Yule of every year,
Is made like Spring to bloom;
And where, at times, we catch the sigh
As of an angel floating nigh,
Who longs but has not power to tell
That in that violet-shrouded cell
Lies nothing better than the shell
Which he had cast aside—
By that sweet grave, in that dark room,
We may weave at will for each other's ear,
Of that life, and that love, and that early doom,
The tale which is shadowed here:
To us alone it will always be
As fresh as our own misery;
But enough, alas! for the world is said,
In the brief "Here lieth" of the dead!

War Poetry of the South: favorable or inverse

William Gilmore Simms dated his preface to the anthology War Poetry of the South as September 8, 1866. Written in Brooklyn, the introduction to the book explains the editor's reason for collecting such a book: the South's sufferings have prompted a high degree of mental and artistic development. Further, Simms writes, though the sentiments seem sectional and anti-Union, the Confederate states' re-assimilation into the fold means the rest of the country assumes these writings as part of their history. He continues:

The emotional literature of a people is as necessary to the philosophical historian as the mere details of events in the progress of a nation. This is essential to the reputation of the Southern people, as illustrating their feelings, sentiments, ideas, and opinions — the motives which influenced their actions, and the objects which they had in contemplation, and which seemed to them to justify the struggle in which they were engaged. It shows with what spirit the popular mind regarded the course of events, whether favorable or adverse; and, in this aspect, it is even of more importance to the writer of history than any mere chronicle of facts.

Facts, says Simms, do not show the emotion which poetry and song allow. These works are without reservation and, therefore, "gush freely and freshly from the heart." His hope is that these poems will be recognized, "not only as highly creditable to the Southern mind," but also as a sincere expression of Southerners — people whose rich sentiments sustained them through war. The book opens with Henry Timrod's "Ethnogenesis" (a poem announcing the birth of a new people) and ends with a few post-war verses. The most emotional are the poems which express grief, as in "Only a Soldier's Grave," credited to "S. A. Jones of Aberdeen, Mississippi":

Only a soldier's grave! Pass by,
For soldiers, like other mortals, die.
Parents he had — they are far away;
No sister weeps o'er the soldier's clay;
No brother comes, with a tearful eye:
It's only a soldier's grave — pass by.

True, he was loving, and young, and brave,
Though no glowing epitaph honors his grave;
No proud recital of virtues known,
Of griefs endured, or of triumphs won;
No tablet of marble, or obelisk high;—
Only a soldier's grave — pass by.

Yet bravely he wielded his sword in fight,
And he gave his life in the cause of right!
When his hope was high, and his youthful dream
As warm as the sunlight on yonder stream;
His heart unvexed by sorrow or sigh;—
Yet, 'tis only a soldier's grave: — pass by.

Yet, should we mark it--the soldier's grave,
Some one may seek him in hope to save!
Some of the dear ones, far away,
Would bear him home to his native clay:
'Twere sad, indeed, should they wander nigh,
Find not the hillock, and pass him by.