The most eventful months of the year 1861 were April and July, for April inaugurated “the irrepressible conflict,” and July saw the first great battle of the war, and a complete Confederate victory. On the first of April, President Lincoln announced his decision to refuse surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates, and added that he would undertake to provision the garrison imprisoned there immediately. At once the South was aflame. On the morning of the twelfth of April, Beauregard, commander of the Southern forces at Charleston, ordered the shelling of the Fort, which continued through the thirteenth, and ended with the evacuation of the Fort on the fourteenth. The war had begun, and though the opening engagement had been without loss to either side, and had ended in a Confederate victory, a far bloodier and disastrous conflict was inevitable. To the rejoicing South, however, there was only the glory of the first decision to consider, and the poets in their rapture gave utterance to a sheaf of verse, innumerable ballads about Sumter, affectionate odes to the nation so gloriously born and baptized by victorious fire, two great national songs, and frantic appeals to North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky to join fortunes of the Confederacy.
The first song published in the South after the war began, and corresponding, in the North, to E. C. Stedman’s “The Twelfth of April” was, fittingly enough, “God Save the South” by George H. Miles of Frederick County, Maryland. Sung to music by C. W. A. Ellerbrock, it was designed to be, and accepted as the national hymn. It did not however, succeed in becoming a favorite. On the twenty-sixth of the month, James Rider Randall, inflamed by the circumstances of the “Baltimore Massacre” on April nineteenth, wrote his “My Maryland,” the most famous Southern poem produced by the war, and one whose influence was greater than a hundred battles. Circulated at first by broadsides it swept through the South like wildfire, and if any force could have drawn Maryland to the side of the Confederacy, it would have been that exerted by this poem. Her Union Governor, however, aided by Federal troops and tactful advice from Washington, succeeded in holding the State to the Union, although many Marylanders were ardent Southern sympathizers. Virginia, on the other hand, who, like Maryland, had been hesitating over her decision, hesitated no longer, after the episode of Sumter, implying as it did, Federal coercion. On the seventeenth of April she seceded from the Union. Her “pausing” had long been considered a shame and a reproach by Southern poets. Now, they burst forth in delight. “Virginia, Late But Sure!” was the triumphant shout of Dr. Holcombe, and Virginia’s answer was expressed in poems such as “Virginia to the Rescue,” “Virginia’s Rallying Call,” or “Virginia’s Message to the Southern States.”
The poetry produced or published in May chiefly concerns the decision of Virginia, and the assembling of the Southern armies, those “Ordered Away” to the field. Virginia’s entrance into the Confederacy had burnt all the bridges leading back—though remotely—to peace. At once the South proceeded to rally her forces to the standard of her cause, and gradually during May and June, flung out her battle line across Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi. Down the river it stretched through Forts Henry and Donelson to New Orleans. At one time, in ’63, the Confederate line surged forward through Western Virginia and Maryland so far into Pennsylvania that Harrisburg was directly menaced. It was the four years’ uncertain task of the Union forces to control this line, to break through it, turn it back and in upon itself, and finally to starve its scattered remnants into submission. As this was accomplished the first lyric outburst of the War—Timrod’s “Cry to Arms,” for example—was gradually exchanged for a slenderer volume of song. At first her poets encouraged the people to faith and labor; then they sang of hope and courage, attempting to relieve the despair of a nation whose cause was lost, and whose ruin seemed irretrievable.
In the spring of ’61, however, there was only exultation, while in the North the cry of “On to Richmond” welled and grew fiercer during May, June and the summer months. Especially did it grow imperative after July twentieth, when the Confederate Capital was transferred there from Montgomery. On the next day, July twenty-first, came the great opening battle of the war, when the Union army under General Scott, joined with Beauregard’s men at Manassas Junction. The result was a complete Confederate victory, and there was unrestricted panic and flight among the Federal troops (the source of much satiric comment among the Southern poets) when Joseph E. Johnston’s army, which had not been expected to arrive until too late to be of assistance to Beauregard, appeared at the crucial moment.
It was only natural that the wave of triumphant exultation which had thrilled the South after the fall of Sumter should again sweep the land. Her poets responded with a sheaf of poems, in which they wrote of the contest from every angle,—odes of thanksgiving for victory, narratives of the course of the flight, eulogies of Beauregard and Johnston, satires on the behavior of the Union forces, camp catches half satiric and half comic, poems of particular incidents of the fight, finally words of regret and sorrow for the slain, and the manner of their slaying. This last theme is particularly interesting, for the feeling of horror at the situation “where brother fought with brother” was ever-present with the Southerners throughout the four years of the War. The very best of the poems occasioned by Manassas were those of Mrs. Warfield, “Manassas,” Susan Archer Talley’s “Battle Eve,” Ticknor’s “Our Left,” and the lines by “Ruth,” entitled “The Battle of Bull Run,” dated Louisville, Kentucky, July twenty-fourth, and written in curious and effective stanzas of irregular “unrhymed rhythms.” Mrs. Warfield’s poem was stirring and vigorous, bold in metaphor and in expression.
They have met at last, as storm clouds
Meet in Heaven,
And the Northmen, back and bleeding
Have been driven:
And their thunders have been stilled,