creasing stress of the
conflict, every public and private energy in the South was absorbed in
maintaining the ever weakening struggle; and with all art and literature
and learning our poet's hopes were buried in the common grave of war;
not because he was not loved and cherished, and his genius appreciated,
but because a terrible need was upon his people, and desperate issues
were draining their life-blood. Then he went to the front. Too weak for
the field (for the fatal weakness that finally sapped his life was then
upon him), he was compelled, under medical direction, to retire from
the battle ranks, and made a last desperate effort to serve the cause he
loved as a war correspondent. In this capacity he joined the great army
of the West after the battle of Shiloh. The story of his camp life
was indeed pathetic. Dr. Bruns writes of him then: "One can scarcely
conceive of a situation more hopelessly wretched than that of a mere
child in the world's ways suddenly flung down into the heart of that
strong retreat, and tossed like a straw on the crest of those refluent
waves from which he escaped as by a miracle." Home he came, baffled,
dispirited, and sore hurt, to receive the succor of generous friendship,
and for a brief time a safe congenial refuge, in 1864, in an editor's
chair of the "South Carolinian", at the capital of his native State.
Here his strong pen wrote the stirring editorials of that critical time,
and there, tempted by the passing hour of comparative calm, he married
Miss Kate Goodwin, "Katie, the fair Saxon" of his exquisite song. Here
the war that had broken all his plans, and wrecked his health and hopes,
and made literature for a time in the South a beggar's vocation, left
him with wife and child, the "darling Willie" of his verse, dependent
upon his already sapped and fast failing strength for support. Here he
saw the capital of his native State, marked for vengeance, pitilessly
destroyed by fire and sword. Here gaunt ruin stalked and want entered
his own home, made desolate as all the hearthstones of his people.
Here the peace that ensued was the peace of the desert! Here the
army, defeated and broken, came back after the long heroic struggle to
blackened chimneys, sole vestige of home, and the South, with not even
bread for her famished children, still stood in solemn silence by those
deeper furrows watered with blood. The suffering that he endured was the
common suffering of those around him,--actua