{"id":35671,"date":"2018-05-24T10:56:52","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T14:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=35671"},"modified":"2018-05-24T12:19:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T16:19:00","slug":"i-am-dying-egypt-dying-a-cincinnati-college-soldier-poets-embrace-of-the-battlefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2018\/05\/i-am-dying-egypt-dying-a-cincinnati-college-soldier-poets-embrace-of-the-battlefield\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Am Dying, Egypt, Dying!\u201d: A Cincinnati College Soldier-Poet\u2019s Embrace of the Battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0 Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>On September 20, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, General William Haines Lytle of Cincinnati was shot and killed by a Confederate sniper\u2019s bullet in the Battle of Chickamauga.\u00a0 A few days later, his body was carried back to his hometown.\u00a0 Lytle\u2019s funeral was held at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Cincinnati and the thousands of mourners followed his casket in the cortege to Spring Grove Cemetery, miles away from the church.\u00a0 The slow procession took up most of the day, the general\u2019s body not arriving at Spring Grove until dusk.\u00a0 Sometime later, his grave marker \u2013 a broken column \u2013 would dominate the landscape of the garden cemetery.<\/p>\n

William Lytle was more than another officer killed in battle.\u00a0 He was a literary man, a soldier-poet whose verse in antebellum America was popular in both the North and the South, and whose lines reflected his experiences on the battlefield.\u00a0 They showed a view of the bloody vista typical of the Romantic era and they embodied his view of duty as well, in his eyes, a terrible beauty of death and destruction.\u00a0 Lytle was a part of the Romantic tradition in his poetry, incorporating his classical education as a boy with his notions of heroism and duty in life.\u00a0 This is an excerpt from a poem he wrote in 1840 as a fourteen-year-old, \u201cThe Soldier\u2019s Death\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly in the morning we found him lying cold and stiff on the scene of his former exploits\u201d<\/p>\n

The night had come and the stars were bright,
\nAnd the moon shone o\u2019er the battlefield,
\nWhen the unjust cause of a tyrant\u2019s might
\nWas crushed by the weight of freedom\u2019s shield\u2026<\/p>\n

Upon the waste so stained with blood,
\nBeside a great and rushing stream,
\nA worn and weary soldier stood,
\nLike a phantom raised in a feverish dream\u2026<\/p>\n

When mortals by the wayside passed,
\nThe soldier\u2019s last deep breath had flown,
\nWith naught to cheer save the midnight blast,
\nOn the battlefield had he died \u2013 alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Lytle was born in 1826 in a prominent Cincinnati family and educated at Cincinnati College, to which the University of Cincinnati traces its heritage to 1819.\u00a0 He later studied for the law and established a practice in the city.\u00a0 But during his early legal career, Lytle maintained a sense of wonder about the world and a desire to achieve satisfaction on the battlefield because he was enamored of the concept of \u201cheroic death.\u201d\u00a0 His life, he felt, should emulate that of Greek heroes and Shakespearean warriors.\u00a0 When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, Lytle enlisted in the 2nd<\/sup> Ohio Volunteer Infantry and served as a captain.\u00a0 During the conflict, he continued his writing, constructing poetry in the notion of a heroic vein.\u00a0 Here are verses from his image of one battle during that war, \u201cThe Siege of Chapultepec\u201d:<\/p>\n

Wide o\u2019er the valley the pennons are fluttering,
\nWar\u2019s sullen story the deep guns are muttering,
\nForward! blue-jackets in good steady order,
\nStrike for the fame of your good northern border;
\nForever shall history tell of the bloody check
\nWaiting the foe at the siege of Chapultepec\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Death revels high in the midst of the bloody sport\u2026<\/p>\n

And on one general, T.L. Hamer:<\/p>\n

The brave who sleep in glory\u2019s shroud,
\nHow proud a fate is theirs!<\/p>\n

After he returned from Mexico, Lytle built up his law practice and was elected to the Ohio state legislature.\u00a0 But his poetry now became his passion and as he published more of it in anthologies and newspapers, he became quite popular on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.\u00a0 This popularity would realize a significance in his eventual death.<\/p>\n

\"10th<\/a><\/p>\n

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, William Lytle was commissioned as a colonel in the 10th<\/sup> Ohio Volunteer Regiment, a regiment composed primarily of working-class Irish in Cincinnati.\u00a0 His troops mustered in nearby Camp Dennison and soon they were dispatched to the Virginia battlefields.\u00a0 The regiment became known, in a tip to an Irish brogue, as \u201cthe Bloody Tinth\u201d for its actions.\u00a0 In his article, \u201cCivil War Imagery, Song, and Poetics: The Aesthetics of Sentiment, Grief, and Remembrance,\u201d literary scholar Richard Leppert astutely attributed Civil War creative output to an awareness of and familiarity with the extensive photo documentation of the war that spoke of the tragedy of youthful death, the breaking familial bonds, and the sincerity of feeling.\u00a0 The sentimental and saccharine ballads and poems often were not critically received, but enjoyed immense popularity because of the emotional responses they invoked.\u00a0 For Lytle, whose verse had been widely recited before the war, his embracing of classical heroism and duty could be rendered as lamentations about the battlefield.\u00a0 This mindset of his was evident even in his letters home to his treasured sisters before he led his men into battle at Carnifex Ferry in Virginia in 1861:<\/p>\n

My beloved Sisters,<\/p>\n

It is very late at night but I could not sleep without writing to you.\u00a0 An engagement is
\nexpected very soon \u2013 probably tomorrow.\u00a0 I am not at liberty to give particulars \u2013
\nexcept that I heard\u00a0 tonight unofficially that my regiment would have the advance\u2026<\/p>\n

Good bye my darling sisters.\u00a0 I hope a merciful God may re-unite us in this world,
\nbut if otherwise ordered let us hope to meet in a better\u2026<\/p>\n

During that battle, albeit a minor skirmish, Lytle\u2019s men suffered many casualties, himself included when he took a bullet in his calf that resulted in a serious wound and sent him back home to Cincinnati for an extended recovery.\u00a0 When he returned to service, he again resumed a customary approach to a battlefield fate, expressed again in a letter to his sisters:<\/p>\n

\u2026I should try to do what is right & just & trust that our father whose shield has so
\nwonderfully protected me heretofore will direct my steps & give me strength to
\nendure everything.\u00a0 I often sigh for a life of calm & quiet but perhaps by bodily
\nweakness & lassitude have an effect on my spirits just now\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Camp<\/a>

Camp Dennison<\/p><\/div>\n

William Lytle\u2019s letters were not dissimilar from that of thousands of other soldiers who were writing home to their loved ones, but he seemed to thrive in the style and the literary tradition he acutely knew he embodied in his writings.\u00a0 As he returned to fighting in Kentucky and Virginia, he penned this letter to one of his sisters:<\/p>\n

Would be to God dear Sister this unhappy war were honorably terminated\u2026And yet I
\nfeel it my duty as long as I can to share with my generation its heavy burden and to
\nstand along side of my brave comrades in arms to the last gasp\u2026In no nobler or holier
\na cause can a man\u2019s life be offered up\u2026Farewell dear Bessie\u2026<\/p>\n

and this poem, \u201cIn Camp,\u201d in 1862:<\/p>\n

I gazed forth from my wintry tent
\nUpon the star-gemmed firmament\u2026
\nI gazed, till to the sun the drums
\nRolled at the dawn, \u201cHe comes, he comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he held to the tropes of death, destruction, and devastation on the battlefields spread out before him, Lytle\u2019s writing most often turned to himself in almost a narcissistic manner of how he \u2013himself- answered the call or entered the fray \u2013 was he up to snuff as a Greek hero, was he executing his duty as a Roman centurion, was he mindful enough of his responsibility to his soldiers and to his family as an American, would he fall on the stage of bloody ground as well and as dignified in death as a Shakespeare tragedian?<\/p>\n

The field of battle became his dramatic stage.<\/p>\n

Lytle was wounded once more in the war.\u00a0 It was the second time, and though one might be tempted to read his verse as poetic posturing of a sort, in the view of his friends, family, and countrymen who read his poems with love and admiration, he was indeed courageous and never hesitant in putting himself in harm\u2019s way as he led his troops across the fought-for fields and mountain passes.\u00a0 His promotion to brigadier general earned him more responsibility along with a heavy-hearted acceptance, and, perhaps appreciation of his own duty.<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/a>

Battle of Carnifex Ferry<\/p><\/div>\n

His time was coming.\u00a0 At Chickamauga Creek in Georgia, he led his troops in September 1863 in a counterattack against the Confederate line.\u00a0 Just days before, even though he had some time ago been reassigned to other regiments, the 10th<\/sup> Ohio Volunteer Regiment, his old troop of Irish fighters, presented him with a bejeweled Maltese cross for his leadership.\u00a0 In the counterattack, around mid-day the sniper\u2019s bullet found him.\u00a0 Knowing who he was, the Rebel troops held his body and respectfully placed a guard around him for the night, quietly reciting his poetry to each other.\u00a0 In a brief truce the next day, Lytle\u2019s corpse was carried to his Union troops and he was sent home for burial.<\/p>\n

Lytle was mourned by both sides of the conflict, his battle poetry and verse of man against man \u2013 and man against fate \u2013 loved by both sides because in many ways the poems answered a need to be noble in life.\u00a0 There was a shared cultural background in this respect.\u00a0 His poetry was a reflection of popular form and subject.\u00a0 The blood and gore of the Civil War may have signaled the end of a reliance upon \u2013 and an education \u2013 in the Romantic form.<\/p>\n

As those Confederate soldiers guarded Lytle\u2019s body the night of his death, one of that poems that was read was one of his most well-known, a poem he wrote in 1858, \u201cAntony and Cleopatra\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026I am dying, Egypt, dying!
\nHark! the insulting foeman\u2019s cry;
\nThey are coming; quick, my falchion!
\nLet me front them ere I die.
\nAh, no more amid the battle
\nShall my heart exulting swell;
\nIsis and Osiris guard thee, –
\nCleopatra, Rome, farewell!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0 Kevin Grace On September 20, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, General William Haines Lytle of Cincinnati was shot and killed by a Confederate sniper\u2019s bullet in the Battle of Chickamauga.\u00a0 A few days later, his body … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,31,13],"tags":[53,420,52],"class_list":["post-35671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uc","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-poetry","tag-uc-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}