John Randolph Thompson, journalist and poet, was born in Richmond,
Virginia, October 23, 1823. He abandoned the law to devote himself
to literature, and for a dozen years successfully edited the
_Southern Literary Messenger_. After the Civil War he was for a
time literary editor of the New York _Evening Post_. He died in New
York City, April 30, 1873.
The incident described in the poem is authentic. For LEE, See “Barbara
Frietchie.”
=Stanza 1.= THE WILDERNESS is a region a few miles south of the Rapidan
river, in Virginia, memorable for the dreadful battle fought there
between the Federal army under Grant and the Confederate forces under
Lee on the 5th and 6th of May, 1864.
=Mendelssohn=, the famous German composer, 1809-1847.
=Stanza 4.= =Grant= (Ulysses Simpson, 1822-1885), the eighteenth president
of the United States, and the most distinguished Federal general in the
War of the Rebellion. Grant’s most celebrated battles were Fort
Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and the conflicts in the
Wilderness and before Richmond, which culminated in the surrender of
Lee. See “Grant,” by H. C. Bunner (Complete Poems); “On the Death of an
Invincible Soldier,” by E. C. Stedman (“Poems Now First Collected”); and
“Great Captain, Glorious in Our Wars,” by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(Complete Poems).