Pennsylvania-born Southern poet Margaret Junkin Preston [1820-1897] became celebrated during the Civil War as an eulogist of the Confederacy and its heroes, especially T.J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Margaret eventually married [1857] another member of the Virginia Military Institute faculty, a friend of Jackson’s, Major John Thomas Lewis Preston [1811-1890]. Major Preston, a widower with several young children, was professor of Latin at the Institute. Two sons were born of this marriage.



The Civil War divided Margaret Preston's family. Her father sympathized with the North and left Lexington. Margaret’s husband and her brother-in-law became officers in the Confederate Army. Major Preston was commissioned lieutenant-colonel and became adjutant-general on the staff of General Jackson.



Margaret's first published book, a prose tale entitled Silverwood, a Book of Memories, appeared anonymously in 1856. During the Civil War, she wrote a verse narrative of the war years under the title Beechenbrook, a Rhyme of the War. It contained two of her most famous poems eulogizing Jackson, “Slain in Battle” and “Stonewall Jackson’s Grave.”



The book was printed in Richmond in 1865 and nearly the whole edition was burned when the city was evacuated. It was reprinted in Baltimore in 1866. In 1870, J.B. Lippincott published her Old Song and New, and in 1875 a volume of verse entitled Cartoons, containing her most successful poetry, was issued in Boston. She continued to write well into the 1890s, and has been anthologized in several 20th century collections of Southern poetry.



On JSTOR
* Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography by Mary Price Coullin

Author(s) of Review: Joan Cashin
The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp. 811-812