enterprise that claimed him, was too distinctly a poet not to feel
somewhat like Pegasus in pound when tied down to the editorial desk.

This quiet life, in which the gentle soul of Hayne, with its delicate
sensitiveness, poetic insight, and appreciation of all beauty, found
congenial environment, soon suffered a rude interruption. As
Charleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and
draw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independent
government, so did she first express the determination of South
Carolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul in
uncongenial association.

Hayne heard the twelve-hour cannonade of Fort Sumter's hundred and
forty guns echoing over the sea, and saw the Stars and Bars flutter
above the walls of the old fort. He saw Generals Bee and Johnson come
back from Manassas, folded in the battle flag for which they had given
their lives, to lie in state in the City Hall at the marble feet of
Calhoun, the great political leader whom they had followed to the
inevitable end. General Lee was in the old town for a little while. A
man said to him, "It is difficult for so many men to abandon their
business for the war." The general replied, "Believe me, sir, the
business of this generation _is_ the war." In the spirit of this
answer Charleston met the crisis so suddenly come upon her.

All the young poet's patriotic love and inherited martial instinct
urged him to the battle, but his frail physique withheld him from the
field, and he took service as an aide on the staff of Governor
Pickens.

At the close of the war, wrecked in health, with only the memory of