University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The War between the States was prolific in war
poems and songs. North and South, poets and
song-writers vied with each other in invoking the
Muse. The newspapers were the popular mediums
for reaching the hearts of the people, at that period.
Consequently their columns, and frequently also the
more select pages of the literary magazines, were
filled with fiery metrical appeals to patriotism, and
the soldiers in the field were animated with martial
strains; impassioned lyrics sang the glory of war, and
stately odes declared that honor and eternal happiness
are assured to those who die for their country.

One class of bards dealt with the softer passion
of love, and the sweet sentiments of domestic happiness,
or with pleasures of memory, hope, and home.
Others were content with picturing the humorous
side of soldier life, and in broad farce or rough burlesque,
occasionally threw a gleam of sunshine over
the cares, hardships and dangers encountered by the
weather-beaten veterans, cheering the wearisome
march, or serving to while away, in reckless mirth,
an hour around the camp-fire.

The poets and balladiers of the South were as
busy and as capable as their fellow-craftsmen of the
North in furnishing the tragic, as well as the melodramatic
and comic material, which constitutes the
poetical and more popular literature of the war.
The work of Southern writers loses nothing by comparison
with the work of their competitors in the
North, in point of general merit. Their productions,
as a vital part of the literary history of our stupendous
struggle, deserve equal prominence, and will well
repay the most earnest study. The natural mental,
moral, social and sentimental qualities which differentiate
the people of the North and the South—
differences whose origin dates back for centuries,
and which are due to peculiarities of race, education,
and social customs—are clearly displayed in the
poetry produced during the war and which, to the
careful student, furnish data for curious and interesting
speculations. The headlong, passionate, declamatory,
impulsive and often dithyrambic style of the
Southern poems and songs, when contrasted with the
peculiarities of the spirit and style of the effusions of
Northern pens, strikingly illustrates the character-differences

that exist in the people indigenous to the
North and the South—the characteristics of the
Puritan and the Cavalier stocks, whose descendants
confronted each other on the battle-fields of the late
war, and who had determined to leave to a final settlement
by the sword the great moral questions and
political issues, which it seemed could not be adjusted
through more peaceful means.

It is impossible to measure fully the influence of
the power of song—of the plaintive ballad, the lofty
and heroic lyric, the rollicking parody, or even the
rude doggerel camp-fire "catches"—on the progress
and the results of the war. It is certain that the
voices of our poets cheered the desponding, nerved
the brave to dare and do heroic deeds, comforted the
absent, the sick, and the dying. They often filled
the soul with lofty aspirations, soothing and brightening
the loneliness and gloom of the prison, kindling
and keeping alive the fires of patriotism, and urging
on to glory or the grave thousands upon thousands of
the best, the bravest, truest and noblest spirits that
ever went forth to battle for their country, and to
defend the cause which they conscientiously believed

to be right, and worthy of the sacrifice of life itself.
Such was the influence and effect of the war-poems
and songs of the South upon our men in the field, and
on the hearts of the Southern people in general.

Some of the poems and lyrics are marked with all
the signs of genuine poetry. They breathe the divine
afflatus, and are worthy of their permanent place in
our literature. Others are the offspring of the moment,
dashed off in the transitory white heat of passion,
serving a passing purpose and worthy of notice only
because they are the expression of a real feeling or
fancy existing at the time. Others, again, are simply
rude, denunciatory or comical rhymes, or even rough
doggerel—the scum and slag of the flaming furnace
of civil war—and preserved only as curios of a
memorable period.

Though the quality of this collection of verse is
naturally exceedingly variable, still it has positive and
permanent value as the poetic expression of the spirit
of a great and valiant people, engaged with heart and
soul in a long and desperate struggle for political
independence, and to which spirit a number of its
poets and song-writers gave vent in strains of fervent

and forceful patriotic inspiration unexcelled, in this
respect, by the war-poetry of any people, ancient or
modern.

Over a score of poets, male and female, have been
drawn upon in this book to furnish more or less
representative poems. A large number of poets and
poems—the latter frequently equal in merit to many
here reproduced—had to be omitted, owing to the
necessary limitations prescribed for this volume. Nor
is it claimed that the poems selected are the best
written by their respective authors. Yet it is hoped
that this book will, in small space, faithfully portray
the spirit and form of the war-poetry of the South.
The brief biographical notice of each author represented
will also, it is thought, be found useful and
interesting.

This little book is especially intended for the
hearts and homes of old Confederate veterans, in
whose breasts its contents will revive tender memories
of camp and field; of the bivouac and the march; of
the gloom and the glory of battle. Thus dreaming
the veterans may hear again the echoes of the martial
music which once thrilled their hearts, and to whose

lively measures they so proudly and joyfully kept
time, in the brave, heroic days of "auld lang syne."
With a tear in the eye, and maybe a strange twitching
in the throat, the old veteran may wish to read one
of these war-poems or camp-fire songs to his children—
his stalwart boys and blooming girls—or even attempt
to sing one of them himself, as he did when he was
"at the front" with Lee, or Jackson, or Gordon, or
Johnston, and when his voice was fresher and clearer
than it is now. His good old wife, as she sits listening,
and dreaming too of those dreadful yet glorious days,
may also find it necessary to wipe her spectacles,
blurred by the moisture of a secret tear. Then the
little book may be tenderly laid away on the table or
shelf, to be taken in hand again some other time.

To these, and to the firesides of the South generally,
this volume is expected to go. To these it appeals
for kindly welcome and generous reception. In this
spirit the compiler hopes that this souvenir of the
war will fulfill its unpretentious mission and find its
appropriate place.