Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

With the publication of Hayne's poems on Vicksburg and the battle of New Orleans, the scene shifts again to Virginia, and especially to the dramatic death of Stonewall Jackson after some of the fiercest battles of the war. This event more than any other pierced the heart of the South and called forth scores of poems from all sections. One of the early collectors claimed to have found forty-eight of these; at least four or five rise to a high level of expression. No other poem gives anything like so adequate an expression of Jackson—his personal appearance, his religious faith, his impressive commands, his almost magical control of his men—as Stonewall Jackson's way by John Williamson Palmer (1825-1906). Excellent also are Margaret J. Preston's Stonewall Jackson's grave and Under the shade of the trees, Flash's Death of Stonewall Jackson, Randall's The Lone Sentry, and the anonymous The brigade must not know, Sir.

In 1863 Charleston was attacked by the Northern fleet and her group of devoted poets gathered about her in suspense. Timrod described the dawn of the eventful day as the city in the broad sunlight of heroic deeds waited for the foe. The hostile smoke of the enemy's fleet ‘creeps like a harmless mist above the brine.’ He knows not what will happen—the triumph or the tomb. With his Carmen Triumphale he sings the rapturous joy of the victory. Paul Hamilton Hayne sang a nobler song of victory, giving the details of the battle, ending in the triumphant victory of Sumter's volleyed lightning, and closing with an apostrophe to his native city:

O glorious Empress of the main, from out thy storied spires
Thou well mayst peal thy bells of joy and light thy festal fires,—
Since Heaven this day hath striven for thee, hath nerved thy dauntless sons,
And thou in clear-eyed faith hast seen God's angels near the guns.

This victory was short-lived, however, for on 27 August, by a land attack, Fort Sumter was reduced to a shapeless mass of ruin, though the city itself stood unshaken. As the fate of the city became more and more uncertain, William Gilmore