The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.
§ 24. The Death of Stonewall Jackson
With the publication of Hayne’s poems on Vicksburg and the battle of New Orleans, the scene shifts again to Virginia, and especially to the dramatic death of Stonewall Jackson after some of the fiercest battles of the war. This event more than any other pierced the heart of the South and called forth scores of poems from all sections. One of the early collectors claimed to have found forty-eight of these; at least four or five rise to a high level of expression. No other poem gives anything like so adequate an expression of Jackson—his personal appearance, his religious faith, his impressive commands, his almost magical control of his men—as Stonewall Jackson’s Way by John Williamson Palmer (1825–1906). Excellent also are Margaret J. Preston’s Stonewall Jackson’s Grave and Under the Shade of the Trees, Flash’s Death of Stonewall Jackson, Randall’s The Lone Sentry, and the anonymous The Brigade Must Not Know, Sir.