[217] Journal, vol. i, 244.
[218] Governor Clark of Texas, also, at this time displayed great interest in the matter. On the fifteenth of May, he wrote to President Davis that he was constituting James E. Harrison, a man thoroughly conversant with the whole subject, “the duly accredited agent of Texas to convey” the Report of April 23, 1861 to Richmond [Official Records, fourth ser., vol. i, 322].
[219] See letter from Pearce to President Davis, May 13, 1861 [ibid., first ser., vol. iii, 576].
[220] Official Records, fourth ser., vol. i, 572-574.
[221] Pike was appointed under authority of a resolution passed by Congress, March 5, 1861. See Message of President Davis, December 12, 1861 [ibid., fourth ser., vol. i, 785].
[222] To-day he is, perhaps, best known by his parody on “Dixie” and by his singularly beautiful and pathetic “Every Year” [Poems, Roome’s edition, 31-34].
[223] See Journal of Proceedings, no. 273 of Johns Hopkins University Civil War Pamphlets.
[224] Bishop, Loyalty on the Frontier, 148-151.
[225] The poem is printed entire in Bishop’s Loyalty on the Frontier, 149-150. The first two stanzas are here given:
DISUNION
Ay, shout! ’Tis the day of your pride,
Ye despots and tyrants of earth;
Tell your serfs the American name to deride,
And to rattle their fetters in mirth.
Ay, shout! for the league of the free
Is about to be shivered to dust,
And the rent limbs to fall from the vigorous tree,
Shout! shout! for more firmly established, will be
Your thrones and dominions beyond the blue sea.
Laugh on! for such folly supreme,
The world has yet never beheld;
And ages to come will the history deem,
A tale by antiquity swelled;
For nothing that time has upbuilt
And set in the annals of crime,
So stupid and senseless, so wretched in guilt,
Darkens sober tradition or rhyme.
It will be like the fable of Eblis’ fall,
A by-word of mockery and horror to all.