Miss Talley’s “Battle Eve,” with its beautiful picture of twilight calm before the darker night of storm and death, is affecting in its simple direct appeal, and sincerity of regret for the carnage of conflict—and was called forth by the seriousness of the impending meeting at Manassas. Francis Orray Ticknor’s “Our Left”—suggested by the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Confederate left wing before McDowell’s men, until reinforced by the timely arrival of Johnston’s army, who brought victory with them, is a spirited, almost exalted account of the actual battle, and was immensely popular at the time. There are many versions of it still extant, in broadsides and anthologies,—for the most part anonymous, since the poem evidently was not at first acknowledged by Ticknor. This has led to a curious connection of names. In one of the broadsides versions in the collection of the Ridgway Library, in Philadelphia, the poem is dated Baltimore, Maryland, October 20, 1861, and is signed by “Old Secesh.” This signature is also given to “The Despot’s Song,” a popular Lincoln satire of a later period of the War, which again is assigned to Baltimore, and from circumstantial evidence seems to be the work of Dr. N. G. Ridgely, a Baltimorean who was a popular satirist of the day, and who signed his work variously “N. G. R.,” “Le Diable Baiteux,” “O. H. S.,” “Cola,” and “B.” This last signature is further associated with the name of James Ryder Randall, for in the Baltimore City Librarian’s Office, in Ledger 1411, there is a broadside version of “Maryland, My Maryland,” published in Baltimore, as were these other broadsides, and signed “B,” Point Coupee (La.), April 26, 1861. It would, of course, be impossible, so many years later, to puzzle out the interrelation of the poems and signatures, and indeed their value would hardly warrant the labor. It is, nevertheless, an interesting example of the chaos which at times arose from the necessarily surreptitious publication and circulation of the Confederate verse.
Manassas was the last great event of the year. There were several minor engagements between the two armies, notably the fight at Ball’s Bluff, on the twenty-first of October; and there was the “Trent Affair,” with the capture of the Confederate emissaries to England, Mason and Slidell, on November eighth. Nevertheless, the Southern poets did not lack inspiring material, the continued “aloofness” of Maryland and Kentucky being among their most vital themes. They were, of course, never idle with their lyrics of loyalty and continued to sound the war note or to sing of the South, with indomitable zeal. They had even by this time, become so accustomed to the state of war, that they could begin to work seriously with satire. The best in this genre written in ’61 are John R. Thompson’s “On to Richmond,” satirizing Winfield Scott’s first campaign, and “England’s Neutrality” (England had passed a proclamation of neutrality towards the two belligerents early in May, on the thirteenth): “O Johnny Bull, My Jo John,” an anonymous ballad occasioned by the presence of English frigates off the coast in ’61, and the unfortunately anonymous, but delightfully humorous “King Scare” (prompted by the terror in the North regarding the Confederate power in the field).
The close of the year was marked by a poem in the Southern Field and Fireside—a “Requiem for 1861,” by H. C. B. It is not of any particular excellence or poetic merit, but it is worthy of note for its expression of sincere sorrow for the conflict that was severing a land of brothers; and for a sense of the horror that war had brought to the South.
Year of terror, year of strife,
Year with evil passions rife
Pass, with seething angry flood,
Pass, with garments dipped in blood,—
Born ’mid hopes, but raised in fears,
With thy dewdrops changed to tears,
With thy springtime turned to blight,