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.

---

---

[280] verse by the attack on Sumter. The spirit of the volunteers was celebrated in A Call to True Men by Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Who's ready? by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The heart of the War by J. G. Holland; Theodore Tilton published in The independent for 18 April, 1861, his clanging and exciting tocsin The great Bell Roland; even Bryant had a strange fire in Our country's call:

Lay down the axe; fling by the spade;
Leave in its track the toiling plough;
The rifle and the bayonet-blade
For arms like yours were fitter now;
And let the hands that ply the pen
Quit the light task, and learn to wield
The horseman's crooked brand, and rein
The charger on the battle-field.

Thereafter the passion of events is recorded in the poems of the war, North and South. Bayard Taylor's Through Baltimore cried out against the opposition offered by Southern sympathizers to the passage through Baltimore streets of the Sixth Massachusetts. A. J. H. Duganne, in his impetuous Bethel, sang of the heroism but not the blunders of that battle, the chief victim of which, Theodore Winthrop,¹ was the subject of Thomas William Parsons's lofty Dirge for one who fell in battle. Bull Run, theme of many exultant Southern ballads and satires,² brought from Boker the impassioned Upon the Hill before Centreville. In the controversy with England which followed the seizure of Mason and Slidell, Lowell wrote his spirited and determined Jonathan to John, second in the new series of Biglow papers. During September, 1861, Mrs. Ethelinda, (Ethel Lynn) Beers wrote The Picket-Guard (attributed in the South to Lamar Fontaine or Thaddeus Oliver), a widely popular piece expressing sympathy with the minor and unnoted victims of the conflict. Also popular was the anonymous Tardy George, that is, General McClellan, of whom the North demanded more activity than he ever attained. In the same cause, though without the mention of names, was Wanted—A Man, by Stedman, who shortly after had to write another elegy, Kearny at seven pines, upon the gallant officer commemorated by Boker in the