Comes forth the South with frankincense,
And vital freshness in her song.
The weight is fallen from her wings,
To find a purer air she springs
Out of the night, into the morn.
CHAPTER II
The Historical Development of the Southern War Poetry
Contemporary criticism is seldom safely to be trusted, but there are times when contemporaneous comment is as valuable as it is enlightening. It is so with this statement by T. C. de Leon—in his introduction to an anthology of the Southern Civil War verse.[11] “If poems born of revolution bore no marks of the bitter need that crushed them from the hearts of their authors, they would have no value whatever, intrinsic or historical.”
Southern war poetry is worthy of preservation because it is an expression of vital appeal and of sentiment wrung from the heart of a people. For the most part, it was written under the stress of the moment. It was indeed the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, but only occasionally does it take its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity. Nevertheless, it speaks the language of men and women, and in it we may read, as perhaps through no other medium, the true story of the development of Southern character, of national spirit, and of definite sectional consciousness.
Today the poetry remains to us in the newspapers and magazines of the period, and in the anthologies and various collections of war verse (the best of these appearing either during the war or shortly after). Most interesting, but most ephemeral of them all, it remains in part in the small printed broadsides, or single sheets in handbill form, which usually appeared anonymously and mysteriously, at times even without the name of the printer. Issued in varying numbers, on wretched paper, and seldom gathered together, so many of these have perished in the passage of the years, that in many instances a single copy may remain in existence. Of the verses that circulated in MSS. there is now little trace. Occasionally, as in the case of K—s “To the Memory of Stonewall Jackson,” some old copy-book or diary will restore them to the light: but of the various sources, less result is obtained from this field than from the others.