Brownell: Father, they died for you!

Civil War poet Henry Howard Brownell dated his poem "One Word" as July 27, 1862:

Speak to us, to-day, O Father!
   Our hearts are strangely stirred —
A Nation's Life is hanging
   On a yet unspoken word.

Long, by the hearthstone corner,
   May the aged grandame sit,
And toil, with trembling fingers,
   That another sock be knit;

Men may march and manoeuvre,
   And camp on fields of death —
The Iron Saurians wheel and dart,
   And thunder their fiery breath;

But one brave word is wanting —
   The word whose tone should start
The pulses of men to flamelets
   Thrilling through every heart! 

That one word Brownell is searching for is, apparently, a word of approval. He recalls the battles thus far, including Shiloh and the Cumberland, and the actions of the Varuna. He believes "they have shown what men may do, / They have proved how men may die." Perhaps the word, then, is assurance that they have not died needlessly:

Spirits, a hundred of thousands,
   Eager, and bold, and true,
Gone to make good one brave, just word —
   Father, they died for you!

Died, in tempest of battle,
   Died, in the cot's dull pain —
Let their ghosts be glad in heaven,
   That they died — and not in vain!

And never fear but the living
   Shall stand, to the last, by thee —
They shall yet make up the million,
   And another, if need there be!

But fail not, as thy trust is heaven,
   To breathe the word shall wake
The holiest fire of a Nation's heart —
   Speak it, for Christ's dear sake!

Speak it, our earthly Father!
   In the Name of His, and smile
At one breath more of the Viper
   Whose fangs shall crash on the file!

The Angel-Songs are forever,
   The Snake can hiss but his day—
Speak, O Shepherd of Peoples!
   And fold earth's blessings for aye.

It is six and eighty years this very day

In response to the shots fired at Fort Sumter a week earlier, Union troops from Massachusetts made their way to Washington, D.C. to protect the national capital from potential attack. In Baltimore, residents who were sympathetic to the Confederate cause did not take the presence of Union troops lightly and, soon, rioting broke out. Four soldiers and twelve civilians were killed in what was later dubbed the Pratt Street Riots. Maryland officials demanded no federal troops make their way through the state again. Eventually, the city of Baltimore was put under Union military control.

The irony of the date — 86 years to the day after the battle at Concord — was not lost on people. On that day, Rhode Island-born and Connecticut-raised Henry Howard Brownell wrote "April 19th, 1775-1861":

Once again, (our dear old Massachusetts!)
Once again the drops that made their way,
Red, ah not in vain! on that old greensward—
It is six and eighty years this very day.

Six and eighty years—aye, it seemed but a memory—
Little left of all that glory,—so we thought—
Only the old fire-locks hung on farm-house chimneys,
And rude blades the village blacksmith wrought.

Only here and there a white head that remembers
How the Frocks of Homespun stood against King George—
How the hard hands stretched them o'er the scanty embers
When the sleet and snow came down at Valley Forge.

Ah me, how long we lay, in quiet and in error,
Till the Snake shot from the coil he had folded on our hearth—
Till the Dragon-Fangs had sprouted, o'erhatched of hate and terror,
And hell, in armed legions, seemed bursting from the earth.

Once more, dear Brother-State! thy pure, brave blood baptizes
Our last and noblest struggle for freedom and for right—
It fell on the cruel stones!—but an awful Nation rises
In the glory of its conscience, and the splendor of its might.

Inauguration of Davis: to be let alone

Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first (and only) President of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861 — 150 years ago today. That day, the Rhode Island-born poet Henry Howard Brownell wrote "The Old Cove," with the epigraph, "All we ask is to be let alone":

As vonce I valked by a dismal svamp,
There sot an Old Cove in the dark and damp,
And at everybody as passed that road
A stick or a stone this Old Cove throwed.
And venever he flung his stick or stone,
He'd set up a song of "Let me alone."

"Let me alone, for I loves to shy
These bits of things at passers by —
Let me alone, for I've got your tin
And lots of other traps snugly in; —
Let me alone, I'm riggin' a boat
To grab votever you've got afloat; —
In a veek or so I excpects to come
And turn you out of your 'ouse and 'ome; —
I'm a quiet Old Cove," says he, vith a groan:
"All I axes is — Let me alone."

Just then he came along the self-same vay,
Another Old Cove, and began for to say —
"Let you alone! That's comin' it strong!—
You've ben let alone — a darned sight too long; —
Of all the sarce that ever I heerd!
Put down that stick! (You may well look skeered.)
Let go that stone! If you once show fight,
I'll knock you higher than ary kite.
You must hev a lesson to stop your tricks,
And cure you of shying them stones and sticks, —
An I'll hev my hardware back and my cash,
And knock your scow into tarnal smash,
And if ever I catches you 'round my ranch,
I'll string you up to the nearest branch.

"The best you can do is to go to bed,
And keep a decent tongue in your head;
For I reckon, before you and I are done,
You'll wish you had let honest folks alone."
The Old Cove stopped, and the t'other Old Cove
He sot quite still in his cypress grove,
And he looked at his stick revolvin' slow
Vhether 'twere safe to shy it or no, —
And he grumbled on, in an injured tone,
"All that I axed vos, let me alone."

Brownell witnessed several battles in what became the American Civil War and often wrote poetry of his experience. Many were collected in 1864 as Lyrics of a Day; or Newspaper-Poetry. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes called him "Our Battle Laureate." A year later, Davis was captured; that incident became a poem too.