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.
§ 11. Gettysburg
Boker in the spring of 1863 greeted the news of the Federal advance with his Hooker’s Across; and Chancellorsville, which called forth so many Confederate poems on the death of Stonewall Jackson, led George Parsons Lathrop to write his dashing ballad, Keenan’s Charge. Perhaps it was again because poets sing best in defeat that no Union poem on Gettysburg quite equals Will Henry Thompson’s later High Tide (1888). Stedman, however, made a ringing ballad, Gettysburg, and Bret Harte preserved a real episode of the day in his John Burns of Gettysburg. Best of all, of course, was Lincoln’s famous address at the battle-field on 19 November, 1863, which lacks nothing of poetry but its outer forms.