Talk:All Quiet Along the Potomac

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According to "Under the Red Patch,"^[1] this poem was actually written by Captain Charles W. MacHenry of Company G, Sixty-Third Pennsylvania Volunteers. According to the author:

In a letter dated Los Angeles, California, November 9, 1907, J. A. Young, former adjutant of this regiment, writes: "I remember one thing that is not generally known, and that is that the poem, "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight" was written by Captain MacHenry of Company G. The original was written by him on a fly-leaf of the roster and can be found in the regimental chest now stored in Washington, D. C. I did not see him write it, but was assured by Adjutant William McGranahan that he saw Captain MacHenry write it, and that he was really the author."

and

In a private letter dated Fort Madison, Iowa, recently received from Mrs. Charles W. MacHenry, she says: "I am proud to pay a tribute to the noblest man I ever knew (my husband) Charles W. MacHenry. In regard to the "Picket Guard," Charles told me he was the author. Captain George B. Chalmers has also assured me of the same truth, and I used to urge Charles to claim the authorship, but he would say, "Every one of my friends know I wrote it."

Castrass (talk) 01:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello!

I forgot to log-in before updating the poem just now, but, after comparing multiple versions of "The Picket-Guard" online for the past week and finally tracking down the original page from the Nov. 1861 issue of Harpers (I have the pdf, if needed), I realized that the text claiming to be "The Picket-Guard" on this page was SIMILAR—but not identical—to the text from the Harper's issue. I updated the text accordingly, with the, like, old-time-y punctuation; I wasn't sure what the exact protocol was there. Friendsihp (talk) 18:28, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]