To the waves say “peace, be still”
Gather up this storm once more,
Where “Thy judgments are in store,”
Send Thy holy dove of Peace,
And our fettered land release!
The same longing for peace is shown in the verses “Christmas Day, A. D. 1861,” by M. J. H. But it must be a peace with victory. That was the earliest conception. By the lives of her sons who had died for her in the year just passed, the South was resolved on whatever sacrifice it might cost her to prevail, despite the fact that she was already weary of the struggle. No better expression of her unchecked purpose may be found than in Mrs. War field’s lines, written in the spring months before Manassas, “The Southern Chant of Defiance.” With Timrod’s “Ethnogenesis,” and Randall’s “Maryland,” it stands the finest poetry which the year produced in the Confederacy.
1862 began with the Confederacy prevailing. Nevertheless, the first six months of the year seemed to bring to the South nothing but gloom. In February of ’62, came news of the capture of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, February sixth, and on February eighth, of the fall of Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland. There was much more importance in these two defeats than at first appeared to the poets; for these forts were the two most valuable gateways to the Southwestern Confederacy, and their fall meant not only the first break in the Confederate line, but as well, direct menace of Southern control of the Mississippi, and New Orleans. It foreshadowed the later evacuation of Nashville, before Grant.
In January, the month before, the chief theme of the Southern poets had been the meditated burning of the cotton crop, by the Southern planters, and this cry of “Burn the Cotton!” had brought forth at least one finely phrased poem. In February, the themes concerned the siege and evacuation of Donelson, and there began the days of wretched anxiety that were to possess the Confederacy until the end of July, when the land was to know that the Virginia part of her line still held, and Richmond was safe. In March McClellan assumed chief control of the Union forces, and began his Peninsula campaign, in response to Lincoln’s reiterated cry, “On to Richmond.” On the eighth of the month, the Confederate ram “Merrimac” out from Norfolk, succeeded in breaking the Federal blockade of Hampton Roads, much to the consternation of the North. The next day, however, in her encounter with the “cheesebox” Monitor, “the turtle” Merrimac was too badly hurt to be of further or immediate use, and the elation of the day before gave way to depression, which was in no way relieved by the events of the next few months. April saw the practical occupation of the Mississippi, with the fall of Corinth, the evacuation of Fort Pillow, and on the lower river, Farragut and Porter’s occupation of New Orleans. Of the Mississippi line, there remained to the Confederates only Vicksburg and Port Hudson. For the South everything depended on the defeat of McClellan’s “On to Richmond” march, since on the sixth of the month, Albert Sidney Johnston, attempting to retrieve the disaster to the middle line in Tennessee, had engaged Grant at Shiloh and Pittsburgh Landing, with tremendous carnage. The battle had proved an incomplete Confederate defeat, but what was worse for the South, had occasioned Johnston’s death.
To all of the many events of these opening months, the Southern poets made continuous response. National songs inspiring faith and courage, as for example, Hewitt’s “Lines Written During These Gloomy Times, To Him Who Despairs,” spoken at the Richmond “Varieties” by Mr. Ogden, Wednesday night, May 7, 1862,—occasional verses suggested by various incidents and episodes of the war’s progress, camp catches and marching ballads praising individual troops and regiments, the poets poured forth in unstinting measure. However, the death of Albert Sidney Johnston, at Shiloh, made a deeper impression on the poets than any event of these spring months. The affection and pure love which the Southerners lavished on their leaders is one of the several remarkable phenomena of the war. In no other war, and in no other country do the leaders appear to have been so beloved, so idolized. To us today, the expression of sentiment seems extravagant and excessive. One attribute it has, however, and one that is not to be denied. The praise of the South for her great men is always passionately sincere. During the war, the Southerners were, as never before, a band of brothers. There was, therefore, in their relations with their great men, a personal contact and appeal which in the North was not so keenly felt. Albert Sidney Johnston, who with Beauregard, had been one of the heroes of Manassas, was the first of Confederate heroes to fall. The South mourned him, as she did all of her sons who fell in her defence, truly and warmly.
When “Stonewall” Jackson died, after Chancellorsville, almost a year later, the outburst of the poets with dirges and elegies was quite typical. S. A. Link quotes T. C. de Leon, the editor of South Songs (1866), as saying:[13] “I had in my collection no fewer than forty-seven monodies and dirges on Stonewall Jackson, some dozen on Ashby, and a score on Stuart.” Even today there are extant a round dozen of poems lamenting the death of Albert Sidney Johnston.