Bury Them a machine-readable transcription R. J. Weir Elizabeth Lorang Kristen Treen transcription and encoding Kristen Treen R. J. Weir Elizabeth Lorang aa.18640206.1a cwnewspaperpoetry Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing
http://www.scholarlyediting.org
Association for Documentary Editing University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
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2012

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). Derivatives must be credited to R. J. Weir and Elizabeth Lorang, made available non-commercially, and distributed under the same terms.

 Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing editor Amanda Gailey editor Andrew Jewell 34 2167-1257 [Unsigned] Bury Them The Anglo-African 6 February 1864 [1] The microfilm copy used for transcription was loaned by Indiana University-Bloomington. <imprint> <date sameAs="#issue_date"/> </imprint> </monogr> </biblStruct> </sourceDesc> </fileDesc> <encodingDesc> <p>This electronic text is a semi-diplomatic transcription of the source text. Hyphenation, punctuation, variant spellings, and errors present in the source text have been retained. The transcription does not attempt to capture all aspects of the original formatting or layout.</p> </encodingDesc> <profileDesc> <creation> <persName xml:id="hhb">Brownell, Henry Howard, 1820-1872</persName> <persName xml:id="rh">Hamilton, Robert</persName> <persName xml:id="th">Hamilton, Thomas</persName> <date when="1864">1864</date> </creation> <langUsage> <language ident="en-US">modern American English</language> </langUsage> <textClass> <classCode scheme="http://authorities.loc.gov"> <term>African-American soldiers</term> <term>Burial--United States--Psychological aspects--History--19th century</term> <term>Death--United States--Psychological aspects--History--19th century</term> <term>Fort Wagner (S.C.)</term> <term>United States. Army. Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 54th (1863-1865)</term> <term>Shaw, Robert Gould, 1837-1863</term> </classCode> </textClass> </profileDesc> <revisionDesc> <change when="2013-03-02" who="#el">made copyediting changes</change> <change when="2013-01" who="#el">revised transcription and encoding to address errors and inconsistencies; updated editorial notes</change> <change when="2012-11" who="#awj">added Scholarly Editing info to TEI header</change> <change when="2012-10-14" who="#el">added and encoded editorial notes</change> <change when="2012-09-06" who="#el">checked transcription and encoding</change> <change when="2012-09-02" who="#el">checked basic encoding</change> <change when="2012-07-17" who="#kt">encoded; inserted placeholder terms</change> <change when="2012-04-29" who="#bw">checked transcription</change> <change when="2012-05-23" who="#kt">transcribed</change> </revisionDesc> </teiHeader> <facsimile corresp="#issue"> <surface xml:id="pp1"> <graphic url="aa.18640206.pp1.jpg"/> <zone xml:id="pp1_cropped" corresp="#poem"> <graphic url="aa.18640206.pp1a_cropped.jpg"/> </zone> </surface> <surface xml:id="pp2"> <graphic url="aa.18640206.pp2.jpg"/> </surface> <surface xml:id="pp3"> <graphic url="aa.18640206.pp3.jpg"/> </surface> <surface xml:id="pp4"> <graphic url="aa.18640206.pp4.jpg"/> </surface> </facsimile> <text corresp="#poem #pp1_cropped"> <body> <lg type="poem"> <head type="main" subtype="authorial" rend="center">BURY THEM.<note type="editorial" resp="#bw #el"><p>Although unsigned in the <title level="j">Anglo-African, "Bury Them" is by Henry Howard Brownell (1820–1872), who included the poem in his Lyrics of a Day; or Newspaper-poetry (1863). This collection of war poems "by a volunteer in the U.S. Service" prompted Oliver Wendell Holmes to dub Brownell "Our Battle-Laureate" in May 1865 ("Our Battle-Laureate," Atlantic Monthly, May 1865, 589–91).

Brownell grew up in East Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Washington College in 1841, he went south to work as a teacher in Mobile, Alabama. Here he formed friendships that provide one context for his arguments in the antislavery preface to Lyrics. On returning to Hartford, he trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the bar in 1844. Between 1850 and 1860, he wrote numerous histories including The People's Book of Ancient and Modern History (1851), The Pioneer Heroes of the New World (1855), and The Eastern, or Old World: Embracing Ancient and Modern History (1856). The 1860 census gives his occupation as "author."

Newspapers published Brownell's poetry throughout the war—a fact he advertised in Lyrics of a Day. (His list of sources includes prestigious monthly magazines as well as local Hartford papers.) His rhyme version of a set of orders given by David Farragut caught the US Navy captain's eye when it appeared in the Hartford Evening Press. The accident was fortuitous; as a result of the correspondence that ensued, Brownell was sworn into the navy and appointed ensign on Farragut's flagship so that he could witness battle at sea. He saw action at Mobile Bay in August 1864. Holmes praised the literary results of Brownell's firsthand experience: "If Drayton had fought at Agincourt, if Campbell had held a sabre at Hohenlinden, if Scott had been in the saddle with Marmion, if Tennyson had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava, each of these poets might possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a combatant" (Holmes, 589). In 1866 Brownell's war poems appeared in a Ticknor and Fields edition, War-Lyric and Other Poems.

WAGNER, JULY 18TH, 1863.The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment was the first regiment of African American volunteers to be raised in the North. On July 18, 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth courageously led a frontal attack on Morris Island's Fort Wagner in South Carolina. Their bravery could not compensate for General Quincy Gillmore's poor planning; the assault failed, and 272 members of the regiment were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner (Russell Duncan, ed., Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Col. Robert Gould Shaw [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999], 52). Northern newspapers reported that Wagner's Confederate garrison had buried Shaw in a mass grave with his men. Abolitionists reinterpreted the Confederate gesture of contempt as a mark of distinction. Bury the Dragon's teeth!

According to Greek mythology, Cadmus killed a dragon guarding a spring in order to make a sacrifice to the goddess Athene; after he offered the sacrifice, Athene told him to sow the dragon's teeth like seeds. Warriors sprang up from the earth.

Brownell uses the legend of the Sown Men as the basis for an extended racialized analogy. The soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts regiment are the "teeth" of the "Monster Freedom" ("incisors," "molars," "cuspids"); Colonel Shaw, widely reported as having been buried in a mass grave with his men, is the "white Fang." In burying the soldiers killed during the attack on Fort Wagner, Brownell's Confederate speakers unwittingly sow a new Union army: "For one that we buried there, / A thousand are come to air!" Brownell suggests that freedmen will enlist to fight against the Confederacy in their thousands. By the time "Bury Them" appeared in the Anglo-African, freedmen had already joined the Union army in large numbers.

 Bury them deep and dark! The incisors swart and stark, The molars heavy and dark— And the one white Fang underneath! Bury the Hope forlorn! Never shudder to fling, With its fellows dusky and worn, The strong and beautiful thing, (Pallid ivory and pearl!) Into the horrible Pit— Hurry it in, and hurl All the rest over it! Trample them, clod by clod, Stamp them in dust amain! The cupsidscuspids, cruent and red That the Monster, Freedom, shed On the sacred, strong Slave sod— They never shall rise again! Never?—what hideous growth Is sprouting through clod and clay? What Terror starts to the day? A crop of steel, on our oath! How the burnished stamens glance!— Spike, and anther, and blade,Brownell uses botanical terminology to describe the sprouting Sown Men. "Blades" and "spikes" are also suggestive of their weaponry. How they burst from the bloody shade, And spindle to spear and lance! There are tassels of blood-red maize— How the horrible harvest grows! 'Tis sabres that glint and daze— 'Tis bayonets all ablaze Uprearing in dreadful rows! For one that we buried there, A thousand are come to air! Ever, by door-stone and hearth, They break from the angry earth— And out of the crimson sand, Where the cold white Fang was laid, Rises a terrible Shade, The wrath of a sleepless Brand! And our hearts wax strange and chill, With an ominous shudder and thrill, Even here, on the strong Slave-Sod, Lest, haply, we be found (Ah, dread no brave hath drowned!) Fighting against Great God. —Hartford Evening Press.