d and perfectly secure. The men of the North wrote
with their pens, while the men of the South wrote with their hearts!

A singular commentary upon this has been given us by Mr. Richard Grant
White--himself a member of the committee. In April, 1861, a committee
of thirteen New Yorkers--comprising such names as Julian Verplanck,
Moses Grinnell, John A. Dix and Geo. Wm. Curtis--offered a reward of
five hundred dollars for a National Hymn! What hope, feeling,
patriotism and love of the cause had failed to produce--for the lineal
descendants of the "Star Spangled Banner" were all in the South,
fighting under the bars instead of the stripes--was to be drawn out by
the application of a greenback poultice! The committee advertised
generally for five hundred dollars' worth of pure patriotism, to be
ground out "in not less than sixteen lines, nor more than forty."

Even with this highest incentive, Mr. White tells us that dozens of
barrelfuls of manuscript were rejected; and not one patriot was found
whose principles--as expressed in his poetry--were worth that much
money! Were it not the least bit saddening, the contemplation of this
attempt to buy up fervid sentiment would be inexpressibly funny.

Memory must bring up, in contrast, that night of 1792 in Strasbourg,
when the gray dawn, struggling with the night, fell upon the pale face
and burning eyes of Rouget de Lisle--as with trembling hand he wrote
the last words of the _Marseillaise_. The mind must revert, in
contrast, to those ravished hearths and stricken homes and decimated
camps, where the South wrought and suffered and sang--sang words that
rose from men's hearts, when the ore of genius fused and sparkled in
the hot blast of their fervid patriotism!

Every poem of the South is a National Hymn!--bought not with dollars,
but with five hundred wrongs and ten times five hundred precious lives!

To one who has not studied the subject, the vast number of southern war
poems would be most surprising, in view of restricted means for their
issue. Every magazine, album and newspaper in the South ran over with
these effusions and swelled their number to an almost countless one.
Many of them were written for a special time, event, or locality; many
again were read and forgotten in the engrossing duties of the hour. But
it was principally from the want of some systematized means of
distribution that most of them were born to blush unseen.

Before my little collection--"South