Henry Timrod
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Courtesy of CyberHymnal: http://www.cyberhymnal.org
Henry Timrod, 1828 - 1867, was known as The Poet Laureate of the Confederacy. He was born in Charleston, of a family of German descent. His father was an officer in the Seminole Wars and a poet himself. Henry studied at the University of Georgia, but, forced by illness to end his formal studies, returned to Charleston. He took a position with an attorney and planned to began a practice of law.
From 1848 to 1853 he submitted a number of poems to The Southern Literary Messenger, under the pen name Aglaus, where he attracted some attention for his abilities. Encouraged, he left the field of law for writing and tutoring.
In 1856 he accepted a post as a teacher at the plantation of Col. William Henry Cannon, in the area that would later become Florence, South Carolina. The single room school building (still preserved in Timrod Park in Florence) was built to provide for the education of the plantation children. Among his students was the young lady who would later become his bride, and the object of a number of his poems - the fair Saxon Katie Godwin.
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preserved in Timrod Park, Florence, South Carolina
While teaching and tutoring he continued also to publish his poems in literary magazines. In 1860, he published a small book, which, although a commercial failure, increased his fame. The best known poem from the book was A Vision of Poesy.
With the outbreak of war, Henry returned to Charleston, soon publishing his best known poems, which drew many young men to enlist in the service of the Confederacy. His best known poems of the time are Ethnogenesis, A Call to Arms, Carolina, and Katie.
Timrod soon followed into the military, but illness prevented much service, and he was sent home. After the bloody Battle of Shiloh, he tried again to live the camp life as a western war correspondent for the Charleston Mercury, but this too was short lived, as he was not strong enough for the rugged task.
He returned from the front and settled in Columbia to become associate editor of the newspaper, The South Carolinian. In February 1864 he married his beloved Katie, and soon had a son, Willie, born on Christmas Eve. During the occupation by General Sherman's troops in February 1865, he was forced into hiding, and the newspaper office was destroyed.
The aftermath of war brought his family poverty and to him, increasing illness. He took a post as correspondent for a new newpaper based in Charleston, The Carolinain, but after several months work, he was never paid, and the paper folded. His son Willie soon died, and Henry was to join him in death, of consumption in 1867.
Henry's friend, P. H. Hayne, posthumously edited and published The Poems of Henry Timrod, with more of his poems in 1873, including his Ode to the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery and The Cotton Boll.
External links
- FAINT FALLS THE GENTLE VOICE OF PRAYER (http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/f/fftgevop.htm) -A prayer for peace penned by Timrod after seeing the horrors of war (words and audio)
- The Poems of Henry Timrod (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/845) from Project Gutenberg