 | War poets of the South and Confederate camp-fire songs. |  |
MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND.
At the time (April, 1861) "Maryland, My Maryland"
—which Oliver Wendell Holmes declared "the
best poem produced on either side during the Civil
Literature and Classics, in Poydras College, Point Coupee,
Louisiana. One day he read the news, flashed
over the wires, of the attack upon the Massachusetts
troops passing through Baltimore. Speaking of the
way in which this splendid lyric was inspired and the
circumstances under which it was written, Mr. Randall
says: "I had long been absent from my native
city, and the startling events there influenced my
mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves
were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had
read in the paper from my mind. I rose, lit a candle
and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit seemed
to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded
to write the song, "My Maryland."
The poem was sent to the New Orleans Delta, and
published in that journal. A lady of Baltimore, Miss
Cary, set the words to music, adapting them to the
air of an old German folk-song, "O Tannenbaum, O
Tannenbaum, wie gruen sind deine Blaetter." The
following story is told concerning the first time the
song was sung in the Confederate Army:
After the battle of Manassas, General Beauregard
invited a number of Maryland ladies to visit his headquarters,
and while there the band of the Washington
Artillery, of New Orleans, serenaded them.
After the serenade the "Boys in Gray" asked for a
the tent, sang "Maryland, My Maryland," The soldiers
caught up the refrain, and the whole camp rang
with the beautiful melody. As the last notes died
away three cheers and a "tiger" were given. It is
said that there was not a dry eye in the tent, and not
a rim was left on a cap outside.
In the Atlanta, Georgia, Constitution, of recent date,
appeared the following brilliant pen-picture of the
author of this immortal war-lyric, and also portraying
its fiery effects upon the spirit of the Southern people.
The article is from the pen of Mr. Wallace P. Reed,
of the Constitution's editorial staff:
"If ever there was a poet with a Muse of fire that
poet was James R. Randall, in the days that tried
men's souls a generation ago. Even now, in these
piping times of peace, I never see Randall without
feeling a fiery tidal wave of memories surging over
and through me.
"What Rouget de Lisle was to France, Randall
was to the Confederacy. What the Marseillaise was
when the entire French nation went mad, "My Maryland"
was when the Southern people threw themselves
into the tumultuous horror of our civil war.
"Looking back upon that sulphurous era, the author
of the South's greatest war-lyric seems a figure of the
dead past, and yet, only yesterday, he met me face to
with his olden dash and impulsive vigor, chastened
and mellowed, as one might expect, by the softening
touch of time.
"While he talked with me about familiar matters
of the hour, with never a word about the past, I found
myself thinking of the potential part played by his
pen in the most tremendous epoch of our history.
"What our most eloquent tribunes could not do, it
was reserved for the poet to do. Where eloquence
failed to move the people, a song set their hearts
aflame. It stirred a fever in the blood of age, turned
weak women into heroines, and wherever its wild
notes were heard legions of armed men sprang up.
It was a bugle-call, a cry to arms, a battle-shout all in
one, with a hint of clashing steel and the thunderous
rush of charging hosts.
"The young Marylander who wrote that song little
dreamed of the influence which it was destined to
wield. He awoke to find himself famous.
"The flaming lyric swept over the land like a conflagration.
From the Potomac to the Rio Grande
"My Maryland" was everywhere—in the air, on every
lip—an inspiration and a prophesy. Millions of
Southerners heard it with feelings of divine exultation,
intense enthusiasm, or maddened frenzy. On
the other side of the border our foemen heard it with
sea, and rolled resurgent back again, to mingle its
strange notes with the brazen clamor of war.
"In gay salons, in crowded assemblies, on the stage,
in the trenches and on the tented field, the song did
its perfect work. It sped onward through the day
and through the night, ringing out from the mountains,
awakening the echoes in the valleys, stirring
every heart and nerving every arm.
"The words alone did not wield this wonderful
power, nor the music; it was the spirit back of them
that made them immortal.
"Looking at Randall yesterday, I lived in the past
again. In how many of the beleaguered cities of the
Confederacy I had heard his great war-song!
"I had heard it from gentle maidens, and from
rough troopers as they rode, booted and spurred, to
the fray. I had heard it here in the City of the Siege,
at the time when roaring cannon and shrieking shells
were its only accompaniment. I had heard it in our
celebrations of victory, and again when we were in
the throes of a heroic despair.
"How it fired the blood and strengthened every
arm that wielded a sword! How well it has been
called the Marseillaise of the Confederacy!
"In those red days Randall was the idol of the
people. Crowds rushed to see him, and every city
warriors and fair women overwhelmed him with
their attentions, which he modestly tried to avoid.
"On one side of the Potomac a nation would gladly
have voted him a monument; on the other an infuriated
people impatiently longed for the accident of
war, that would enable them to load him with chains
in one of their Bastiles.
"An old writer has said that if he could make a
nation's songs, he cared not who made its laws. Randall's
famous song is an illustration of the force of the
foregoing oft quoted saying. It was a power in
the land, and it molded the thought and character and
literature of one of the greatest and yet one of the
most short-lived of Republics."
| War poets of the South and Confederate camp-fire songs. | |