Sidney Lanier, renowned as a poet and musician, was also a soldier of the South who, in a very real sense, gave his life for the Confederacy.

Lanier was born of a well-to-do family in Macon, Georgia, on February 3, 1842. He was a carefree young man nearly nineteen, who had graduated from Oglethorpe College and immediately begun teaching, when Georgia seceded on January 19, 1861. Lanier resigned his position and enlisted as a private in the Macon Volunteers.

Shortly thereafter, on April 19, Macon’s Rifles and Volunteers received a call from President Jefferson Davis to come to Virginia. The inexperienced soldiers rushed to leave the next day, eager for the distinction of being the first troops from another state to come to Virginia’s aid. Lanier marched off with his younger brother Clifford at his side.

For the first year the Lanier boys considered the War a lark. They had picket duty on a Norfolk beach, but there was ample time to visit the young ladies on the Virginia plantations. Sidney began composing music for his ever-present flute. He organized his army buddies into a band that played for military occasions and also for dances in some of the fine homes.

When Sidney received a furlough, all of these girls paled in comparison to the one he met in Macon, Mary Day. He instantly fell in love, but he had to persuade Mary through letters when he returned to the battlefield.

On May 15, 1862, Lanier was fighting at Drury’s Bluff. The Monitor advanced up the river and fired on the small fort his company was defending. Next his regiment was ordered to Chickahominy, where it participated in the Seven Day’s Battles around Richmond. Lanier experienced warfare at its worst, Just before the July first battle of Malvern Hill, the men marched all night through drenching rain over swampy roads.

In August they were ordered to Petersburg to rest. While there, Sidney and Clifford transferred to Major Milligan’s battalion of the Mounted Signal Service.

Sidney attracted the attention of the officers with his proficiency, his good spirits and his flute playing. He was often invited into the company of the general and his staff to pass an evening in music.

In August of 1864 the brothers were separated when they were made signal officers on separate blockade runners out of Wilmington, North Carolina.

In the downpour of a November storm, Sidney Lanier stood on the bridge of the Lucy, bobbing in the Atlantic south of Wilmington. He was waiting to signal to pick up a vital cargo of meat, medicine and shoes. Concealed by the rain, the Lucy had left her haven up the Cape Fear River and ventured into the lair of the Federal armada. Five ironclads, disclosing the location of their guns by constant muzzle flashes, bombarded Fort Fisher as the Lucy silently floated by. The small ship made it safely into the Gulf Stream. Then the storm ceased, and the moon sailed out from behind a cloud. The Santiago-de-Cuba loomed into sight. The Lucy ran up canvas and fled, but the cruiser steamed in pursuit. It was quickly over. Sailors in blue peacoats swarmed the deck of the captured Lucy.

SUSTAINED WITH FAITH AND A MELODY OF HOPE

Sidney was taken to Point Lookout, Maryland, where thousands of Confederate inmates were housed in shabby tents on the damp sand beside the Chesapeake Bay. Winter wind whipped the prisoners. Lacking clean water or food, prisoners killed rats to eat. Yet, through it all Lanier sustained himself and others by faith and courage. By Christmas Sidney was extremely ill, but he still played his flute. As Christmas carols spun out a melody of hope, they drew others from their tents to gather around his consolation.

Tuberculosis consumed Sidney, and his friends feared he was dying, but someone secreted gold into the prison and bribed a guard, who let a few escape. The escapees, including Sidney Lanier, made it to a ship bound for Fortress Monroe. Sidney, who was deathly ill, lay in the hold of the ship until a motherly lady aboard ship took him into her care. Her deceiving appearance allowed her to smuggle medicine, contraband of war, from New York into Dixie. Lavishing her supply upon Sidney, she brought him to feeble strength.

Lanier began a slow, painful journey through the Carolinas, reaching Macon, Georgia, on March 15, 1865. Completely broken in health, he tried to release Mary from her promise to marry him, but she vowed eternal love. The War ended, but with the family fortune destroyed and Oglethorpe College forced to close, Lanier had no way to support her. Mary’s father, Clarence Day, refused consent for them to marry.

After they parted, Sidney wrote and published his first novel, Tiger Lilies. He secured a teaching position in Prattville, Alabama, and at last, on December 19, 1867, Sidney and Mary married. For two weeks the Lanier home was filled with bliss; then he began hemorrhaging from his lungs. Sidney described the next two years, saying:

With us of the younger generation of the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been not dying.

Recognition of Lanier’s musical genius came in December of 1873, when he became first flutist for the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore. Paid the princely sum of $60.00 per month, he was at last able to put his time to writing. Books for boys, critical studies of English and poetry as musical as his flute flowed from his pen. "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and "The Marshes of Glynn" extolled the beauty of his native state of Georgia.

Lanier knew that his time was short, He was appointed lecturer in English literature at Johns Hopkins University, but he was coping with constant hemorrhages. Lanier died on September 7, 1881, no longer able to battle the disease that had crushed his body, but not his spirit, since his days as a prisoner. He was only thirty-nine years old.

Bitterness never tarnished Sidney Lanier’s soul. He clung always to strong faith in God. Lanier dictated his greatest poem, "Sunrise", with his dying breath.