Paul Hamilton Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on January 1, 1830. Hayne's father, Robert Y. Hayne (1791-1839) was a lawyer and politician. The young Hayne took up the practice of law, but later abandoned the legal profession to pursue his literary ambitions. Hayne, after the war, adopted Georgia as his home. He is sometimes referred to as the "Laureate of the South." [Source: "Paul Hamilton Hayne, Charleston, South Carolina: Writer of the Republic," in Mildred Lewis Rutherford, The South in History and Literature, A Hand-Book of Southern Authors, From the Settlement of Jamestown, 1667 to Living Writers 452-462 (Atlanta: Franklin-Turner Co., 1907) (1906)] Hayne lost his father while he was still an infant and was raised by his mother in the home of a prosperous and cultured Charleston uncle, Robert Y. Hayne, who was a notable orator who served in the United States Senate. He attended Charleston city schools and the College of Charleston, from which he graduated in 1852. He practiced law for a short time but abandoned the legal profession to pursue his literary interests. Hayne served in the Confederate Army, beginning in 1861, as staff aide to Governor Pickens and remained in the Army until his health failed. Hayne lost all his possessions when Charleston was bombarded. "His house with his fine library and other property having been burned during the bombardment of Charleston, he removed, in 1866, with his family to a farm in the pine woods about sixteen miles from Augusta, Georgia." [George Armstrong Wauchope, The Writers of South Carolina: With a Critical Introduction, Biographical Sketches, and Selections in Prose and Verse 203-212, at 203 (Columbia, South Carolina: The State Co., Publishers, 1910)] In Groveton, Georgia, where he lived until his death, Hayne gave up the practice of law, and took on editorial positions, including the editorship of Russell's Magazine which was promoted by William Gilmore Simms and the Charleston Literary Gazette. He also contributed to the Southern Literary Messenger, Home Journal, and Southern Bivouac. Hayne published various collections of poems, including a complete edition in 1882, including romantic verse, long narrative poems, and ballads. Like so many of his fellow Southern poets, he was fond of nature and made it a subject of his poetry. Rutherford notes that Hayne was "[p]ossibly he most active spirit in the literary movement of the South" and that "his war songs are his best lyrics." In her estimation, "[n]o Southern poet has written so much or done so much to give a literary impulse to this section of the country, and he deserves to be called the "Laureate of the South." [Rutherford, supra at 452] Hayne died at his home, Copse Hill, at Grovetown, Georgia, on July 6, 1886.