THE SLEEPER

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog above its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
Edgar Allan Poe

June First

... The year,
And all the gentle daughters in her train,
March in our ranks, and in our service wield
Long spears of golden grain!
A yellow blossom as her fairy shield,
June flings her azure banner to the wind,
While in the order of their birth
Her sisters pass, and many an ample field
Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold,
Its endless sheets unfold
The snow of Southern summers!
Henry Timrod
(Ethnogenesis)

Kentucky admitted to the Union, 1792

Tennessee admitted to the Union, 1796

John H. Morgan born, 1825

June Second

In regard to African Slavery, which has played so important a part in our political history, Randolph was an Emancipationist, as distinguished from an Abolitionist. This distinction was a very broad one; as broad as that between Algernon Sidney and Jack Cade; or between Charlemagne and Peter the Hermit—in fact, it was the difference between Reason and Fanaticism. On this subject Randolph and Clay concurred; both were Emancipationists, and both denounced the Abolitionists; as did also Webster, and all the best, wisest, and purest men of that day.

Judge Daniel Bedinger Lucas

John Randolph born, 1773

June Third

Other leaders have had their triumphs. Conquerors have won crowns, and honors have been piled on the victors of earth’s great battles, but never, sir, came man to more loving people.

Henry W. Grady

Jefferson Davis born in Kentucky, 1808

June Fourth

In the hallowed stillness of your bridal eve, ere the guests have all assembled, lift up to yours the pale face, love’s perfect image, and you shall see that vision to which God our Father vouchsafes no equal this side the jasper throne—you shall see the ineffable eyes of innocence entrusting to you, unworthy, oh! so unworthy, her destiny through time and eternity. Inhale the perfume of her breath and hair, that puts the violets of the wood to shame; press your first kiss (for now she is all your own), your first kiss upon the trembling petals of her lips, and you shall hear, with ears you knew not that you had, the silver chiming of your wedding bells far, far up in heaven.

George W. Bagby

June Fifth

THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH

Instead of superficial adornments and supine action, the intellectual sympathies and interests of these women were large, and they undertook with wise and just guidance, the management of households and farms and servants, leaving the men free for war and civil government. These noble and resolute women were the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built up the greatness of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements of the Confederacy.

J. L. M. Curry

June Sixth

To the brave all homage render,
Weep ye skies of June!
With a radiance pure and tender,
Shine, oh saddened moon!
Dead upon the field of glory,
Hero fit for song and story,
Lies our bold dragoon.
John R. Thompson

Turner Ashby killed in Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1862

Patrick Henry dies, 1799

June Seventh

Peace to the dead! though peace is not
In the regal dome or the pauper cot;
Peace to the dead! there’s peace, we trust,
With the pale dreamers in the dust.
James Ryder Randall

Monument created, 1910, to the memory of Confederate officers who perished from starvation and exposure at Johnson’s Island

June Eighth

Aurora faints in the fulgent fire
Of the Monarch of Morning’s bright embrace
And the summer day climbs higher and higher
Up the cerulean space;
The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain,
And the sportive breeze of the ocean dies,
And soon in the noontide’s soundless rain
The fields seem graced by a million eyes;
Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold
As bright as a gnome’s in his mine of gold,
While the slumb’rous glamour of beam and heat
Glides over and under the windless wheat.
Paul Hamilton Hayne

Stonewall Jackson turns upon Fremont at Cross Keys, 1862

June Ninth

He sleeps—what need to question now
If he were wrong or right?
He knows ere this whose cause was just
In God the Father’s sight.
He wields no warlike weapons now,
Returns no foeman’s thrust,—
Who but a coward would revile
An honest soldier’s dust?
Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson’s men.
Mary Ashley Townsend

Stonewall Jackson meets Shields at Port Republic, 1862

June Tenth

The indomitable courage, the patient endurance of privations, the supreme devotion of the Southern soldiers, will stand on the pages of history, as engraven on a monument more enduring than brass.

Maj. Jas. F. Huntington, U. S. A.

United Confederate Veterans organized at New Orleans, 1889

Battle of Bethel, Va., the first regular engagement of the War between the States, 1861

June Eleventh

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; but we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them, as every man with a heart must respect those who gave all for their belief.

Justice O. W. Holmes
(Massachusetts)

June Twelfth

The band preceding the coffin smote on their ears with poignant loud lamenting, then carried its sorrow to die moaning on the night. As the shadowy cortege filed by—men bearing lanterns on either side the hearse—a horse, riderless, with boots empty in the stirrups, following—a few soldiers carrying arms reversed—a single carriage with mourners—the effect was infinitely sad. So common the spectacle during the Battle Summer, it did not occur to them to even wonder which of our martyrs was thus journeying to his last home.

Mrs. Burton Harrison

June Thirteenth

A little bird there was once, with golden wings;
In the stars she would build her nest;
And so, with a twig in her beak, at eventide
When Hesperus sank to rest,
Away to the starry deep she flew;—for said she,
“In the Pleiades shall my nesting be!”
Ah, little bird! There are heights far, far too high
For the reach of those tiny wings!
Down here by this thicket of haw let us rest, you and I,
And list what the brooklet sings!
Allen Kerr Bond

June Fourteenth

A flash from the edge of a hostile trench,
A puff of smoke, a roar
Whose echo shall roll from the Kenesaw Hills
To the farthermost Christian shore,
Proclaims to the world that the warrior priest
Will battle for right no more.
Henry Lynden Flash

Gen. Leonidas Polk, the Warrior Bishop, killed at Kenesaw Mountain, 1864

June Fifteenth

O, Art, high gift of Heaven! how oft defamed
When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits,
By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits
Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed
By some who would invoke thee.
Washington Allston

June Sixteenth

W’en banjer git ter talkin’
You better hol’ yo’ tongue,
Hit mek you think youse gre’t an’ gran’
An’ rich an’ strong an’ young,
An’ ev’rything whar scrumpshus
Right at yo’ feet is flung.
Oh, my soul gits up an’ humps hisse’f
An’ goes outside an’ walks,
W’en a picker gits ter pickin’
An’ de
banjer
talks!
Anne Virginia Culbertson

Winchester captured by Confederates, 1863

June Seventeenth

GENEROUS TRIBUTE OF A BRAVE FOE AND DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN SOLDIER AND CITIZEN

Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight.

Charles Francis Adams
(Massachusetts)

June Eighteenth

Now, Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin’ on der packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an’ c’u’dn’t stan’ de racket;
An’ so, fur to amuse hese’f, he steamed some wood an’ bent it,
An’ soon he had a banjo made—de fust dat wuz invented.
De ’possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I’s a-singin’;
De ha’r’s so long an’ thick an’ strong,—des fit fur banjo-stringin’;
Dat nigger shaved ’em off as short as washday-dinner graces;
An’ sorted ob’ em by de size, f’om little E’s to basses.
Irwin Russell
(Origin of the Banjo on Board the Ark)

June Nineteenth

By Captain Winslow’s account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armored, my shot and shell fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the meantime, in spite of the armor of the Kearsarge, I lodged a rifled percussion shell near her stern post—where there were no chains—which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. On so slight an incident—the defect of a percussion-cap—did the battle hinge.

Raphael Semmes

The “Alabama” sunk by the “Kearsarge” off Cherbourg, 1864

June Twentieth

Jamestown and St. Mary’s are both within the segment of a circle of comparatively small radius whose centre is at the mouth of the Chesapeake. In this strategic region, the key of America, Raleigh chose the base from which he would colonize the new empire; here the Jamestown experiment succeeded, after Raleigh’s head had fallen on the block; the Revolution was fired by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at Yorktown; the War of 1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and Fort McHenry; the crisis of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents of the United States were born.

Allen S. Will

The first Lord Baltimore obtains from the Crown a grant of the territory lying between the Potomac and the 40th parallel, 1632

Secession of West Virginia from Virginia sustained by the Federal Government, 1863

“Virginia, who had given to all the States in common five great commonwealths of the northwest and the county of Kentucky, was now bereft of half of what remained to her”

June Twenty-First

What care I if Cyrus McCormick was born in Rockbridge County? These new-fangled “contraptions” are to the old system what the little, dirty, black steam-tug is to the three-decker, with its cloud of snowy canvas towering to the skies—the grandest and most beautiful sight in the world. I wouldn’t give Uncle Isham’s picked man, “long Billy Carter,” leading the field, with one good drink of whisky in him—I wouldn’t give one swing of his cradle and one “ketch” of his straw for all the mowers and reapers in creation.

George W. Bagby

Cyrus Hall McCormick of Virginia patents his reaping machine, 1831

June Twenty-Second

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
Edgar Allan Poe

Arkansas readmitted to the Union, 1868

June Twenty-Third

THE BROOK

It is the mountain to the sea
That makes a messenger of me:
And, lest I loiter on the way
And lose what I am sent to say,
He sets his reverie to song
And bids me sing it all day long.
John B. Tabb

June Twenty-Fourth

AN AMUSING COMMENTARY ON THE MAKING OF SOME HISTORIES

I have here a small volume entitled, “John Randolph, by Henry Adams.” It is one of a series called “American Statesmen,” and emanates from the thin air of Boston. The series is edited by Mr. J. T. Morse, Jr. By what law of selection he has been governed in allotting to particular authors the preparation of respective biographies it is impossible to divine. It is quite clear, however, that he has not followed any rule of qualification or congeniality hitherto recognized by men or angels. For example, a foreigner, Dr. Von Holtz, who, in an emphatically European and un-American treatise on the Federal Constitution, had already denounced Calhoun as a kind of Lucifer, is appointed his biographer; Henry Clay, the father of Protection (as it is called), is assigned to Carl Schurz, who, I understand, is an ardent advocate of Free Trade; while John Randolph is turned over to the tender mercies of a descendant of the first Vice-President, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams!

Had this unique law of selection prevailed hitherto, we might have had a biography of Luther by Leo the Tenth; a life of St. Thomas Aquinas by Thomas Payne; while Pontius Pilate, or more likely the devil himself, would have been selected to chronicle the divine career of Jesus Christ.

Daniel B. Lucas

John Randolph dies, 1833

June Twenty-Fifth

But far away another line is stretching dark and long,
Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng;
Another war-cry’s on the air, as wakes the martial drum,
And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come.
George Herbert Sass

Beginning of Seven Days’ Battle around Richmond, 1862

June Twenty-Sixth

A PROPHECY, 1869

The close of the Civil War found the conquering States so nearly equally divided between the Radical and Conservative parties, that if the South should be restored to her relative might in the Union, the balance would be thrown at once in favor of the Conservatives. The problem therefore assumed a mathematical form, and demanded that the South should not reinforce the Conservatives of the North. This could be prevented only in two ways, viz.; either by keeping the South out of the Union entirely or by placing the political power there in the hands of a minority. To adopt one or the other of these expedients was a party necessity. This is the whole key to Reconstruction; and fifty years hence no man living will be found to deny it.

Judge J. Fairfax McLaughlin
(In the “Southern Metropolis,” June 26, 1869)

June Twenty-Seventh

The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of our enemy than in our own.

Robert E. Lee

Lee issues his famous Chambersburg order, 1863

“Winnie” Davis born, 1864

June Twenty-Eighth

COL. WILLIAM MOULTRIE; SERGEANT JASPER; “PALMETTO DAY”

The battle holds a conspicuous place in the history of the Revolution. It was our first clear victory over the British, and won over one of England’s most distinguished naval officers.

John J. Dargan

Defence of Fort Sullivan, (Moultrie,) 1776

North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana readmitted to the Union, 1868

June Twenty-Ninth

His trumpet-tones re-echoed like
Evangels to the free,
Where Chimborazo views the world
Mosaic’d in the sea;
And his proud form shall stand erect
In that triumphal car
Which bears to the Valhalla gates
Heroic Bolivar!
James Ryder Randall

Henry Clay dies, 1852

June Thirtieth

Yes, there’s a charm about the name of Mary
Which haunts me like some old enchanter’s spell,
Or rather like the voice of some sweet fairy,
Singing low love-songs in a lonely dell.
It hath a music that can never weary,
A strain that seems of love and grief to tell,
The echoes of an anthem from the shrine
Of peace, and bliss, and rest, and love divine.
William Woodson Hendree

Robert E. Lee marries Mary Page Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, 1831