beautiful poem mentioned in my letter of last week—'All Quiet Along the Potomac'—written by my girlishly modest friend, Thaddeus Oliver, of the 'Buena Vista guards.' I should like for you to know him; for, though almost as diffident and retiring as a gentle girl, he is a man of culture, fine literary tastes, and an excellent lawyer."
From this letter, therefore, I am enabled to pay, with positiveness and certainty, that these now celebrated lines were familiar to me at least a month or six weeks before they appeared in Harper's [Weekly].
There is another circumstance, too, connected with the earlier publications of this poem, to which I wish to call your attention. I am unable now to recall the precise time when I first saw it in print, but this I remember with perfect distinctness: that it was introduced as a waif, or as having been found in the pocket of an unknown dead soldier. You may have seen such a preface to it yourself. At any rate, I am sure there must be many still living who will recall the fact.
Whatever the world may hereafter think of the authorship of these beautiful lines, I, at least, shall live and die under the firm and unalterable conviction that they were conceived and first expressed by your gifted and lamented father.
Yours, truly,
Communication to Richmond (Virginia) Dispatch.
Editors of the Dispatch:
In connection with the recently revived question as to the authorship of "All Quiet Along the Potomac," which is now being generally discussed in the Southern journals, I beg to narrate the following, which, with some, may have a bearing upon the pretensions of some of the claimants. In the summer of 1862, being in the company of several Mississippi soldiers, comrades of * * * the beauty of the lines, which were then becoming generally known, was commented upon, and the question of authorship discussed. They spoke very lightly of both the valor and literary ability of * * * asserting positively that he did not write the lines; that, though he promulgated them in his regiment; they were, by his comrades, supposed to have been written by a private soldier in a Georgia regiment.
On the whole, the proofs which we file for the inspection of any who may be interested in reading them in full, seem conclusive that this beautiful poem was written by Mr. Thaddeus Oliver, of the Second Georgia regiment, who was a gallant soldier, and gave his life for "the land he loved." Happy the son who had such a
