Shelby County TN Archives News.....THE DEAD CONFEDERACY January 21, 1872 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/tn/tnfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Bill Boggess william-boggess@webtv.net and Fanny Green MOORES (Borland) April 16, 2006, 4:19 pm DAILY ARKANSAS GAZETTE January 21, 1872 (transcribed; 04/16/06) Copy courtesy of Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Little Rock. DAILY ARKANSAS GAZETTE Little Rock, ARK, Sunday, January 21, 1872, page2, column3     ________________________________ ---------------------------------           "THE   DEAD   CONFEDERACY"                                                        Some kind friend has sent us a copy of the London Cosmopolitan of December 21st, with the following notice of one of the fair daughters of Arkansas, and the beautiful poem published on the first page of todays GAZETTE. No higher compliment could be paid to the young authoress, and we have no doubt the many friends of her honored father, who once represented the state in the highest legislative tribunal in the nation, will read with pleasure and delight the high encomium paid her:       In a former number we published a touching poem from the pen of a valued friend, entitled "The Lost Cause" full of interest and breathing a hopeful significance that cannot but have its influence in the quarter where its author's sympathies and many of his tenderest associations lies. We publish this week, in another column, a poem bearing the above title, which has been sent us by the friend above alluded to, with the information that it is from the pen of a daughter of Senator Borland. It is with a feeling of pride and sadness that we present this poem to the British public --- where, although the subject is among the things of the past, its beauty will find a ready appreciation. It is touching, tender, chasie, classic, beautiful. We are glad to take this young author by the hand and welcome her among the ranks of the poets. We regard this poem as one of the finest rhythmic tributes that has yet been paid to the "Lost Cause;" and its sprit of tender resignation, the heart brokenness of its entire utterance cannot but touch the very souls of those whose sympathies and associations induced them to look upon that cause almost as a crime. The devotion of the southern women to the Confederate cause was something exceeding belief, and now that the cause is dead, it will not we hope, challenge unworthy criticism that we seek to snatch this last wail of their sorrow from the dangers of inappreciation and oblivion, and place it, where it ought to be among the lists of those gems of posey which should never be forgotten.       Miss Borland is a native of Little Rock. She is now the wife of an estimable citizen of Memphis. Her first attempt at poetry, when she was but twelve years of age [1860], was published in the GAZETTE. Even at that early age her fugitive pieces were widely copied and favorably commented on by the press.           ----------<>---------- Additional Comments: Poetess Fanny Green Borland (1848AR-1879TN), was eldest daughter of Arkansas' 1842 frontiersman, once U S Senator, Colonel Solon Borland, M D (1811VA-1864TX) with his third wife, songstress, Mary Isabel Melbourne (1824LA-1862AR). Fanny was born in, "City of Roses", Little Rock September 1848 and died at "Bluff City", Memphis 23 August 1879. Solon spelled her name Fanny in his will, she seemingly used Fannie. "The Dead Confederacy", no doubt her most famous poem, written in 1865, when she just turned 17, at Princeton, Arkansas under alias "Violet Lea", with a signed copy at Special Collections University of Arkansas. This poem was acclaimed by Generals Albert Pike and John M Harrell, most likely the poem mentioned in Virginia Davis GRAY's 1863-1865 diary, published 1983, in Arkansas Historical Quarterly, annoted and edited by Carl Moneyhon, UALR see entry of 27 Dec 1865, page 168, Part II. Other poems we have retrieved are:           "At My Father's Feet"               "David O Dodd" "Judge Not By The Outward Look"             "To My Son's Scrap-Book" From Confederate Veteran, January 1894, page 2; Gen. John M. Harrell writes: I wrote from a sickroom, down with la grippe. Your gossipy, genuine, genial "Old VETERAN" comes to cheer me. I congratulate you on republishing the "Dead Confederacy " of Fannie Borland. How appropriate it is now, and was when written, by a girl of not then twenty. It reads to me like a fragment from Keato. It glows with passion, but is crystalline in its pride, mournful and graceful as winter and night, which it invokes. Miss Borland was a great genius who perished too son. I knew her, and saw her in 1870, when she completed a rare quartette of gifted, beautiful girls, that formed the family of Gen. Pike, in Memphis, the others being the Misses Pike and Miss Sallie Johnson, now Mrs. Cabell Breckinridge, each a type of surpassing beauty. Miss Johnson was sole daughter of ex Senator R. W. Johnson, and Miss Borland, eldest daughter of ex Minister Solon Borland. Source: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ga/topic/news/CV/cv1894pg2.htm See her Tennessee obituary; Obituaries: (TN) (AR) File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/tn/shelby/newspapers/thedeadc7nw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/tnfiles/ File size: 6.1 Kb