Dear Sir — In reading your article claiming “All quiet along the
Potomac,” for your father,
Thaddeus Oliver, I notice that you request all persons who can throw any light on the subject to do so at once; therefore I make the following statements.
I do not profess to have any acquaintance with the facts myself, but I have a friend,
A. Shaw by name, for whose word I have the greatest respect, who has put me in possession of a train of facts which convinces me that
Thaddeus Oliver is the author of the poem.
Mr. Shaw was a member of a Texas regiment, and was in camp with the Second Georgia at the time of the writing of the poem.
A few days after the poem was written, he was on a visit to
Mr. Oliver, and the latter, while turning over some of his clothing, drew a piece of paper from the pocket of a coat and presented it to
Mr. Shaw.
This paper was the original manuscript of
All quiet along the Potomac. Mr. Shaw, who is the possessor of a brilliant memory, read the poem over a few times, and afterwards rewrote it from memory, making but two or three mistakes in
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copying.
He says he longed to publish the poem, but would not do so without the consent of the author, which, from the author's modesty, he knew he could never get. He showed me the copy he had made immediately after reading the original.
I do not know of the whereabouts of
Mr. Shaw at present, or I would put you on his track.
I suppose him to be in this State or
Texas.
Should you consider this letter of any value in establishing your father's claims to the authorship of the poem under consideratian, you are at liberty to use it in any manner you may see fit. Let me congratulate you,
Mr. Oliver, on being the son of the genius who created
All quiet along the Potomac. I sincerely hope that you may succeed in establishing your father's claims to one of the most powerful lyrics of the late war. Trusting that my mite to the good cause will do all the good it is intended to do,
I am truly, yours,
My Dear Sir — Numerous engagements, of both a private and professional character, and a desire to overlook some old papers of mine, among which I thought it possible I might find a copy of
All quiet along the Potomac to-night, presented me, after earnest and repeated solicitations, by your
father in his own handwriting, are my reasons for not having addressed you this letter long before now.
I knew
Thaddeus Oliver well, perhaps more intimately than any member of the Second Georgia regiment, outside his own company.
We first met in the convention, of which we both were members, that convened in
Milledgeville, in 1860, to send delegates to the the
National Democratic convention, then soon to assemble in
Charleston.
On the 9th of April, 1861, the “
Burke sharpshooters,” in which I was a private, was ordered to
Tybee island.
About the same time the “
Buena Vista guards,” of which your lamented father was a member, with other companies, was sent to a point below
Savannah, for the purpose of organizing the Second Georgia regiment, afterwards so ably commanded by that noble patriot and brave, heroic soldier,
Paul J. Semmes.
At the organization,
Captain Butt, of your father's company, than whom a more high-toned, generous gentleman or gallant officer was not in the Army of Northern Virginia, defeated
Captain Holmes, of mine, for the majority; and believing that unfair means had been employed to produce the result, in which I was entirely mistaken, I wrote and published a bitter article, which I afterwards often had cause to regret, in which I animadverted,
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with cruel and unprovoked severity, upon
Major Butt.
This produced an estrangement between your father and myself, which continued unhealed until a common-service and a common danger brought us once more together.
Our regiment was soon ordered to
Virginia--first to
Richmond, thence to
Acquia creek, and afterwards to
Centreville, from whence detachments were weekly sent out on distant pickets, almost within bow-shot of the
Potomac, along whose lines the bones of many a gallant Southron rest.
On one of these posts your father and I again were reconciled; and belonging to the same profession, with many tastes and sympathies in common, I soon became warmly and strongly attached to him, and have many reasons to know that the feeling was, in part, at least, reciprocated.
I state these facts for the purpose of showing you how I happen to know what I do about the authorship of the lines in question; for your father, besides being a modest man, was never quick to give either his hand or confidence to a stranger.
We had just returned from Falls' church, near
Alexandria, to
Centreville.
None of
Longstreet's old brigade, none of the Second Georgia, I know, will ever forget the dark, cold, rainy night march on the retreat from there to Fairfax Courthouse.
But though we all were drenched and shivering, there still was “life in the old land yet.”
I remember well, as we rested on our arms in the murky gloom, some one cried out, “Whose treat is this?”
when
Judge Perry, now of this county, then orderly sergeant of company “D,” in the Second Georgia, utterly unable, even there, to resist his abominable
penchant for punning, answered, “It is long's-treat.”
But I am digressing.
We had now returned to
Centreville, and one evening while in conversation with your father on law and literary subjects, as uncongenial as these may seem, I proposed to read him some lines I had written and published, “To
Wilson's New York Zouaves.”
After I had finished, he appeared to be absorbed for a moment, then said: “Well, I have just written some lines myself, which I shall not publish, but if you will promise me secrecy, I will read them to
you.”
I promised, and
for the first time in my life, heard
All quiet along the Potomac to-night. I shall never forget either the occasion or the circumstances.
He read the lines without unusual feeling until he came to the picture of the little trundle-bed, when his voice trembled and his eyes filled with tears.
That “touch of nature” was contagious, and I felt the big drops trickling down my own cheeks; and even to this day, when I recall the scene, now that he is dead and gone, I feel again something of the old emotion.
I begged him at once for a copy, but he resolutely refused.
Shortly after, however, I left
Virginia for
Georgia and took command of a company in a regiment there being organized for the
Confederate service.
The day before my departure I prevailed on him to comply with my request, “upon my honor as soldier” that
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I would neither read it in the regiment, have it published, nor mention his name in connection with its authorship.
This promise, I am sorry to say, I only partially fulfilled; for I read the poem to
Dr. Charles Bostick, now of this county:
John H. Hudson, late of
Jefferson county, but now deceased, and to my brother,
Dr. Wm. W. Ashton, now of
Shreveport, Louisiana, who were my messmates before leaving the regiment, and, on my return to
Georgia, to my wife, and told her who wrote it. That your father was the author of the poem, there can never be, to my mind at least, even the
shadow of a doubt. * * * * * *
Though professional critics may perhaps smile, or ridicule the idea, I submit that the poem itself furnishes almost positive internal evidence of having been written by a married man upon whom the sacred memories of home, and wife, and children were crowding as he wrote.
Such a man was
Mr. Oliver. * * * *
Mr. Oliver, both by natural gifts and careful culture, was fully equal to such a production. * * * * From
Mr. Oliver's well-known modesty, he would have been the very last man to publish the poem, if he published it at all over his own signature. * *
I have no desire whatever for any publicity in this controversy, indeed I would gladly avoid it, but I feel it due to justice and the memory of your gallant and gifted father to place this communication at your disposal.
Though I neither know you personally, nor have had any correspondence with you, I beg you to accept the assurance of my high esteem with sentiments of sincere regard.
My Dear Sir — I owe you many apologies for my long silence, but have delayed answering your further inquiries touching the authorship of
All quiet along the Potomac to-night, that I might overlook a large number of letters written by me to my wife from
Virginia during the
summer and
fall of 1861, thinking that some of them might enable me to fix, or approximate dates that had escaped my memory when I last wrote you. And I am gratified beyond measure to inform you that the search has not been in vain.
You will remember that in my communication to you, published in the Savannah
Morning News, I stated that, after acquainting my brother and
Dr. Bostick with the noble lyric in question while still in camp, I subsequently read it to
Mrs. Ashton.
I find now that I
wrote to her on the subject before returning to Georgia. I have before me a letter addressed to her, written on coarse yellow Confederate paper, dated “Camp Second Georgia regiment, near
Centreville, Virginia, October 3d, 1861,” in which the following sentence occurs: “Upon my arrival at home, should I be so fortunate as to obtain the hoped — for furlough, I will read you the touching and
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beautiful poem mentioned in my letter of last week--‘All Quiet Along the
Potomac’ --written by my
girlishly modest friend,
Thaddeus Oliver, of the ‘
Buena Vista guards.’
I should like for you to know him; for, though almost as diffident and retiring as a gentle girl, he is a man of culture, fine literary tastes, and an excellent lawyer.”
From this letter, therefore, I am enabled to say, with positiveness and certainty, that these now celebrated lines were familiar to me
at least a month or six weeks before they appeared in Harper's [
Weekly].
There is another circumstance, too, connected with the earlier publications of this poem, to which I wish to call your attention.
I am unable now to recall the precise time when I first saw it in print, but this I remember with perfect distinctness: that it was introduced as a
waif, or as having been found in the pocket of an unknown dead soldier. You may have seen such a preface to it yourself.
At any rate, I am sure there must be many still living who will recall the fact.
Whatever the world may hereafter think of the authorship of these beautiful lines, I, at least, shall live and die under the firm and unalterable conviction that they were conceived and first expressed by your gifted and lamented father.
Yours, truly,
Richmond, May 4, 1872.
Edtiors of the Dispatch:
In connection with the recently revived question as to the authorship of “All quiet along the
Potomac,” which is now being generally discussed in the
Southern journals, I beg to narrate the following, which, with some, may have a bearing upon the pretensions of some of the claimants.
In the summer of 1862, being in the company of several
Mississippi soldiers, comrades of * * * * * * * the beauty of the lines, which were then becoming generally known, was commented upon, and the question of authorship discussed.
They spoke very lightly of both the valor and literary ability of * * ** * asserting positively that he did not write the lines; that, though he promulgated them in his regiment, they were, by his comrades, supposed to have been written by a private soldier in a Georgia regiment.
R. A. B.
