hen snow fell
with old fashioned violence, and Third Street was convulsed by
old-fashioned panics, when everybody went mad over Offenbach, when one
started for New York from the Walnut Street Ferry, when George Boker
was writing his dramas and George Childs was beginning to play the
public Maecenas." Oftentimes the sturdy figure of Walt Whitman could
be seen walking on Broad Street, while Horace Greely, buried in
newspapers, travelled aboard a boat between New York and Philadelphia.

It was the Civil War that not only turned Boker's pen to the Union
Cause, but changed him politically from a Democrat to a staunch
Republican. In fact, his name is closely interwoven with the
rehabilitation of the Republican party in Philadelphia. He often
confessed that his conscience hurt him many times when he realized he
cast his first vote for Buchanan. "After that," he is quoted as having
said, "the sword was drawn; it struck me that politics had vanished
entirely from the scene--that it was now merely a question of
patriotism or disloyalty." His "Poems of the War," issued in 1864,
contained such examples of his martial and occasional ability as the
"Dirge for a Soldier," "On the Death of Philip Kearney" and "The
Black Regiment," besides "On Board the Cumberland" and the "Battle of
Lookout Mountain."

About this time, there was founded the Union League Club, with Boker
as the leading spirit; through his efforts the war earnestness of the
city was concentrated here; from 1863-71 he served as its secretary;
from 1879-84 as its President; and his official attitude may be
measured in the various annual reports of the organization. But even
in those strenuous days--at the period when the Northern spirits
lagged over military reverses, and at the time when the indecision
of General McClellan drew from him the satiric broadside,--"Tardy
George"--privately printed in 1865--Boker's thoughts were concerned
with poetry. His official laureate consciousness did not serve to
improve the verse. His "Our Heroic Themes"--written for the Harvard
Phi Beta Kappa--was mediocre in everything but intent, recalling what
Taylor wrote to him: "My Harvard poem, [he had read it in 1850 before
the same fraternity] poor as it is, was received with great applause;
but, alas! I published it, and thus killed the tradition of its
excellence, which, had I not done so, might still have been floating
around Harvard."

In 1869, Boker issued "Koenigsmark, The Legend of