It was no corpse of friend or foe. I saw a flag uprolled—
The golden stars, the gleaming stripes were gathered fold on fold,
And lowered into the hollow grave to rot beneath the mould.
Then up they hoisted all around, on towers, and hills, and crags,
The emblem of their traitorous schemes—their base disunion flags.
That very night there blew a wind that tore them all to rags!
And one that flaunted bravest by the storm was swept away,
And hurled upon the grave in which our country’s banner lay—
Where, soaked with rain and stained with mud, they found it the next day.
From out the North a Power comes forth—a patient power too long—
The spirit of the great free air—a tempest swift and strong;
The living burial of our flag—he will not brook that wrong.
The stars of heaven shall gild her still—her stripes like rainbows gleam;
Her billowy folds, like surging clouds, o’er North and South shall stream.
She is not dead, she lifts her head, she takes the morning’s beam!
* * * * *
Much verse came from writers of the rank of Alice and Phœbe Cary, who published nearly all their war poems in the Post. Mrs. R. H. Stoddard, still remembered as a novelist, wrote unfinished but sincere and touching poetry. Miles O’Reilly, whom Walt Whitman found the most popular writer of war verse among the troops, contributed repeatedly. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, leading his black troops in South Carolina, and recalling Bryant’s “Song of Marion’s Men,” sent his graceful “Song from the Camp.” Park Benjamin wrote much in the early years of the war, and before its close Helen Hunt Jackson began to appear in the Evening Post’s pages. One of the most stirring songs of the conflict, “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,” originally appeared in the Evening Post of July 16, 1862. Unsigned, many supposed it was the editor’s. At a large Boston meeting the next night, Josiah Quincy read it as “the latest poem written by Mr. Wm. C. Bryant.” Its actual author was John S. Gibbons, who for a time was financial editor of the Post, and wrote two volumes on banking.
Bryant himself published two hymns in the journal, “The Earth Is Full of Thy Riches” (1863) and “Thou Hast Put All Things Under His Feet” (1865). But the finest poetical contribution which he ever made to it was his “Death of Lincoln”:
O slow to smite, and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
which first saw the light in the Evening Post of April 20, 1865.