Father Ryan Portrait Magazine of Poetry 1892

"The Conquered Banner" was one of the most popular of the post-

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

poems. It was written by Father

Abram Joseph Ryan Abram Joseph Ryan (February 5, 1838 – April 22, 1886) was an American poet, Catholic priest, Catholic newspaper editor, orator, and former Vincentian. An active proponent of the Confederate States of America, he has been called the "Poet-Priest ...

, a Roman Catholic priest and Confederate Army chaplain. He has been called the "poet laureate of the postwar south" and "poet-priest of the Confederacy".

Background

The poem was first published on June 24, 1865, in the ''

New York Freeman The ''New York Freeman'' (1849–1918) was an American Catholic weekly newspaper in New York City. History The ''Weekly Register and Catholic Diary'' was started on October 5, 1833, by Fathers Schneller and Levins. It lasted three years, and was ...

'', a pro-Confederate, Roman Catholic newspaper. Ryan published it under the pen-name "Moina". It made Father Ryan famous''Furl that banner: the life of Abram J. Ryan, poet-priest of the South,'' David O'Connell, Mercer University Press, 2006, p. 60-62. and this became one of the best-known poems of the post-war South, memorized and recited by generations of Southern schoolchildren. Ryan told an interviewer that he wrote the ''Conquered Banner'' in

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Di ...

shortly after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, "When my mind was engrossed with the thought of our dead soldiers and our dead Cause". David O'Connell has described ''Conquered Banner'' as echoing

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

's extremely popular "

Concord Hymn "Concord Hymn" (original title was "Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836")Buell, Lawrence. ''Emerson''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003: 56. Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, who edited ' ...

" (1837). According to O'Connell, readers would have unconsciously have thought of Emerson's poem about "Concord" when Ryan used the word "conquered" and, by using Emerson's reference to a furled flag, Ryan would have enhanced the patriotic resonance his poem had among Southern readers brought up reciting Emerson's "Concord Hymn". The final verse reads:

Furl that banner, softly, slowly!
Treat it gently—it is holy--
For it droops above the dead.
Touch it not—unfold it never,
Let it droop there, furled forever,
For its people's hopes are dead!

—The Conquered Banner.

This is interpreted as Ryan's statement that, however noble he and others thought the Confederate cause had been, the defeat was final, and the Confederate idea should be put away forever, along with the

Confederate flag The flags of the Confederate States of America have a history of three successive designs during the American Civil War. The flags were known as the "Stars and Bars", used from 1861 to 1863; the "Stainless Banner", used from 1863 to 1865; and ...

.''The Victorian homefront: American thought and culture, 1860-1880'', Louise L. Stevenson, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 147. The poem was published again in the first issue of the ''

Confederate Veteran The ''Confederate Veteran'' was a magazine about veterans of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War of 1861–1865, propagating the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. It was instrumental in popularizing the legend of Sam ...

'' in 1893. John McGreevy calls it the most popular Confederate poem in the post-Civil War years.''Catholicism and American Freedom,'',

John McGreevy John T. McGreevy (born 1963) is an American historian who has been serving as Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of the University of Notre Dame since July 1, 2022. He was formerly the dean of the College of Arts & Letters at the University of Not ...

Norton and Co., New York 2003, p. 112. Attorney and Southerner Hannis Taylor wrote of the effect of Father Ryan's poem on readers sympathetic to the Confederacy: "Only those who lived in the South in that day, and passed under the spell of that mighty song, can properly estimate its power as it fell upon the victims of a fallen cause."''Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920,'' University of Georgia Press, 2009, pp. 60-61. The poem reached the height of its popularity between 1890 and 1920. In 1941

Carl Van Doren Carl Clinton Van Doren (September 10, 1885 – July 18, 1950) was an American critic and biographer. He was the brother of critic and teacher Mark Van Doren and the uncle of Charles Van Doren. He won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autob ...

included the poem in ''The Patriotic Anthology,'' writing that to omit Southern "expressions of patriotism" would be to "falsify the record and also impoverish it"."New Editions," Edward Larocque Tinker, Aug. 31, 1941, New York Times.

References

External links

Full lyrics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conquered Banner Songs of the American Civil War 1865 poems Flags of the Confederate States of America