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.

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[306] types of Virginia gentlemen. Mrs. Preston wrote a still more beautiful tribute to Ashby, in which she expresses one of the favourite ideas of the South—that the struggle was between the cavaliers and men of low breeding. The tragic aspects of Virginia and the heroism of her people were visualized also by a Georgia poet, Francis O. Ticknor (1822-74), whose wife was one of the distinguished Nelsons of the Old Dominion. His Our left is the most vivid account of the second battle of Manassas. Virginia is the best tribute we have to the commonwealth that bore the brunt of the struggle. The more popular Virginians of the Valley suggests the most romantic story of early years and adds that the same spirit pervades their descendants:

We thought they slept! the men who kept
The names of noble sires,
And slumbered, while the darkness crept
Around their vigil fires!
But aye! the golden horse-shoe Knights
Their Old Dominion keep,
Whose foes have found enchanted ground,
But not a Knight asleep.

One phase of the struggle ends with Lee's whole army crossing the Potomac into Maryland—an event celebrated by Hayne in his Beyond the Potomac. Then the fighting changed to the West, and we have Thompson's poem on Joseph E. Johnston in which he exhorts the West to emulate Virginia in its struggle for freedom. Requier's Clouds in the West is followed by Flash's tribute to Zollicoffer, Ticknor's poem on Albert Sidney Johnston, Hayne's The Swamp Fox—a spirited characterization of Morgan, who seems to the poet a reincarnation of the South Carolina Revolutionary patriot Marion. Connected also with the battles of the West were Ticknor's Loyal and Little Giffen of Tennessee—the latter based on a story of real life and a striking illustration of the heroism with which the sons of the masses threw themselves into the Southern struggle. This poem, so dramatic in its quality, so concise in its expression, so vital in its phrasing, is destined to outlive all the tributes to the great leaders of the Confederacy. Mrs. Preston's Only a private and Mrs. Townsend's The Georgia