Six

ARE YOU TOO DEEPLY OCCUPIED TO SAY IF MY VERSE IS ALIVE?

Tuesday, April 15, 1862 2 pm Thermometer 60.0. No Rain. Stat clouds SW2. Winds SE 2. Therm attached to barometer 55.0. Barometer 30. 279. Dry Bulb 59.64. Wet Bulb 51.14. Humidity 51.1. Remarks No frost in ground. Many clouds.

—Ebenezer Snell, The Meteorological Journal Kept at Amherst College

After Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederate States, a group of high-spirited Amherst College boys decided he should be laid to rest in a mock burial. Through means not entirely clear, they obtained an old hearse, dumped an effigy inside, wrangled a white horse from the livery stable, secured oxen and cart for a dirge-playing band, and rounded up classmates to join them in mournful procession. Somehow, they even persuaded one young man to dress as Mrs. Davis, robed in widow’s weeds with an infant in her arms—or so it seemed. The whole assemblage paraded in feigned solemnity with stand-ins for Confederate generals Beauregard, Johnston, and Lee leading the way. They marched past the Dickinson law office, past gawking visitors at the Amherst Hotel, past diners at the local oyster house, and around the scraggly town common. Then they headed toward a grove on the south end of the college near Professor Snell’s house. When oxen, carriages, band, and mourners finally arrived in a thicket of trees, one student jumped on top of the hearse and delivered a full-throated oration for the late departed. A choir sang, the band played, a military salute rang out, and Mrs. Davis—“the bereaved partner of his buzzum,” the boys noted—wailed at just the right time.¹

Emily was used to displays of youthful exuberance in her college town, but things were different now. In the last month, the war had taken a terrible turn and no mature person in Amherst was pretending about anything, including the demise of the Confederate president. The Civil War was a crucible through which every American would pass, including Emily. She realized, of course, that life was short and offered no promises. But the present moment with its maelstrom of battles and soldiers’ deaths galvanized her as never before. She already knew she wanted to be distinguished and make her family proud. She also understood that if she wanted something she’d never had before, she would have to do something she’d never done. The time to share her poems with the world was now. The unprecedented step she would take that day triggered a chain of events that would bear fruit later on. The events would impact her own work, and the course of American literature as well. The developments began on a battlefield with a cannon and smoke and a clash of armies. It would not be long before their reverberations reached Emily’s desk.

After their first skirmish on Roanoke Island, where Frazar Stearns, son of the Amherst College president, had sustained a minor wound, the company had advanced to Newbern, North Carolina. They arrived on a miserable day of drizzle and fog, marching twelve miles from the coast in wet uniforms. Awaiting them were Confederate soldiers staked out in a makeshift fort at the brickyard. As thick smoke engulfed them, Major Clark and the Massachusetts 21st led the assault. Aware his men could not adequately see him, Clark jumped atop a cannon and yelled to draw bayonets. He flagged for reinforcements and as he did, he heard the distinctive wail of an approaching Minié ball. He pivoted just as the bullet hit Adjutant Stearns. Frazar slumped. “My God,” he murmured, and fell. Charles Thompson, a former custodian at the college, ran with bandages, lint, and wine, and helped carry the young man to a shed. But neither the black custodian, who had known Frazar since birth, nor the surgeon could save him. I wanted you to know, Thompson later wrote President Stearns, I closed his eyes.*²

After Union forces seized the brickyard, Frederick Sanderson, Frazar’s classmate, searched the battlefield for discarded boards. He gathered up scraps of wood sunk in muddy pools. Then he measured and cut the wood, hammering the boards into a makeshift coffin. Sanderson rowed six miles down the Neuse River to Union gunboats sitting offshore, and for the next eight days, stayed with Frazar’s body for the journey back to New England. When Sanderson arrived in Amherst on March 19, he found President Stearns keening with grief. For the Massachusetts 21st, the battles were only beginning. In the months ahead, they would fight in the second battle at Bull Run, then Antietam, and finally Fredericksburg. One soldier wrote that the company of Amherst Boys—once so eager to join the battle—were now “broken, bruised and sheared.”³

Frazar’s death hit everyone hard. The twenty-one-year-old was considered the crown prince of Amherst, beloved, amiable, and as passionate about music as he was science. People in town especially remembered his enthusiasm for his future. “Sometimes I almost feel as though I could pray to God to let me become a chemist,” he had said.⁴ With his death, many residents of Amherst felt that everything the town stood for—intelligence, learning, dreams of the young—had been snuffed out. Few were more devastated than Austin Dickinson. Edward had first heard the awful news about Frazar and broke it to his son. That’s when Austin spun into anguish beyond the reach of his father, his wife, and his sister. He kept repeating his father’s words as if in saying them, fate would be altered. His mental state alarmed Emily and she recognized that—for perhaps the first time in her life—she was powerless to reach him. “The World is not the shape it was,” she wrote.⁵ Like Austin, Emily felt untethered and with little she could do, she sat down and wrote a poem, echoing her father’s words to Austin.

It dont sound so terrible – quite – as it did –

I run it over – “Dead”, Brain – “Dead”.

Put it in Latin – left of my school –

Seems it dont shriek so – under rule.

Turn it, a little – full in the face

A Trouble looks bitterest –

Shift it – just –

Say “When Tomorrow comes this way –

I shall have waded down one Day”.

I suppose it will interrupt me some

Till I get accustomed – but then the Tomb

Like other new Things – shows largest – then –

And smaller, by Habit –

It’s shrewder then

Put the Thought in advance – a Year –

How like “a fit” – then –

Murder – wear!⁶

Emily knew her heartache stemmed from more than the Battle of Newbern. She was painfully aware—as was her brother—of the price Amherst College men were paying in the war. Austin was thirty-two years old and married with a child, but Amherst graduates in similar circumstances and even decades older had already enlisted for the Union. William Nelson, Class of ’29, was well over fifty and serving as a hospital chaplain. Robert Wilson, Class of ’32, was hunting rebel guerrillas with a regiment in West Virginia. His former classmates were also on the front lines. All Austin had to do was look out his window to realize the price others were paying. From his law office he could see the college flag flying at half staff. By the end of the war, thirty-one Amherst men would have died for the Union. No one knew exactly how many students from the South had perished.⁷ With no military draft yet in place, Austin was not required to enlist, but the inescapable knowledge of what other men had stepped up to do and he had not—carried weight. Emily knew that. “The Heart with the heaviest freight on – ,” she wrote Samuel Bowles, “Does’nt – always – move – .”⁸

Emily hoped Bowles might be able to help. Although she knew Sam was often uncomfortable in emotional moments, there was no one who could speak more candidly to her brother. Shortly after hearing the news about Frazar, Austin asked to see Sam, but Bowles could not get away. Seeing his disappointment, Emily intervened. She rarely asked an outsider for help with Dickinson family matters, but she was deeply concerned. “Austin is chilled – by Frazer’s murder,” she had written Bowles. “He says – his Brain keeps saying over ‘Frazer is killed’ – ‘Frazer is killed,’ just as Father told it – to Him. Two or three words of lead – that dropped so deep, they keep weighing – Tell Austin – how to get over them!”† ⁹ But Sam Bowles could not help. Frazar’s death had shaken him as well. Since the war began, he frequently stayed in his newspaper office unable to move. Consumed with dispatches, he stared at the telegraph, and once he was home, sat alone in front of the fire, eating grapes and drinking brandy.¹⁰ The long hours brought Bowles to the breaking point.¹¹ Dr. Holland, who had been on the lecture circuit, returned to the Republican to temporarily relieve him.¹² But even with respite from work, Bowles did not improve. Some feared his energy and vitality had been lost forever. “I am unhorsed, literally and figuratively,” he admitted.¹³ The day he read the words “Stearns, Frazar. Killed,” Bowles took the newspaper and threw it away. “The news from Newbern took away all the remaining life,” he told Austin and Sue. “I did not care for victories—for anything.” Later Bowles apologized to Austin for not being able to rally when needed. “Some of the reasons for my incapacity, & consequent disappointment to you, you know because I have told you.—I have many cares & small power.”¹⁴ Samuel Bowles was in emotional tumult and he knew it. “I am going through a ‘crisis,’” he said. “I don’t know whether it is religious, mental, or physical, but I shall be better or worse when I get through. Whatever it is, it is awful night-mareish.”¹⁵

Emily never used the word “nightmare,” but she was in crisis too. She had been seized with anxiety since the previous autumn. Few people in Amherst would forget September 20, 1861, the day the Amherst Boys—students, graduates, and townsmen—shipped off to camp. One hundred men marched past Emily’s window followed by a long line of neighbors cheering and waving flags—the largest crowd ever assembled in town, one person said—a “sea of human beings.” As the official ceremony commenced at the train depot down the hill from the Dickinsons’ home, Emily watched. A locomotive sat heaving and sputtering, poised to take the company on the first leg of its journey. Edward Dickinson, as always, presented remarks on behalf of the town. He urged the young men to seek valor, and warned them of camp vices. A local clergyman was less scolding, offering prayers and comfort. Then the train whistle blew and loved ones embraced. A ladies’ chorus sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” with townspeople joining in the final verse. The last words the Amherst Boys heard as they pulled out of the station were “land of the free and the home of the brave.” For nearly everyone, patriotic fervor was an attempt to keep dread at bay. They hardly wanted to admit fear to themselves let alone one another. Yet they knew what was coming. First came the death of a town blacksmith, next one of Mrs. Adams’s boys, then another Adams son, and now Frazar at Newbern.¹⁶ “I had a terror – since September – ,” Emily wrote. “I could tell to none – and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground – because I am afraid.”¹⁷

Emily was indeed singing—as she often called writing poetry—at times composing nearly a verse a day. As feverish as her productivity was, the poems were marked not by haste or carelessness but control. They were taut, intentional verses made more so by constant revision. Like townspeople at the depot, Emily confronted fear with hymns, even if writing at times felt brutal.

It is easy to work when the soul is at play –

But when the soul is in pain –

The hearing him put his playthings up

Makes work difficult – then –

It is simple, to ache in the Bone, or the Rind –

But Gimblets – among the nerve –

Mangle daintier – terribler –

Like a Panther in the Glove – ¹⁸

In many poems, a more forceful first-person voice emerged, as if she were squaring her shoulders and announcing who she was and what she believed. Often she presented herself as an outsider, especially when writing about religion, and in many poems she wore nonconformity as a badge of honor and insignificance a point of praise. She delighted in standing apart, and sneered at puffed-up somebodies who forever croaked about themselves. “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” she wrote in one verse. “Are you - Nobody - too?”¹⁹

Yet it was unclear—as it always would be—if Emily were speaking for herself in her poems or inventing a persona with vastly different opinions. Amherst residents would have been surprised if they had discovered the shy, reclusive daughter of Edward Dickinson was capable of writing such bold lines as

I’m “wife” – I’ve finished that –

That other state –

I’m Czar – I’m “Woman” now – .²⁰

She rarely showed such audacity in person. Perhaps the voice on-the-page was so different because Emily was writing for someone else—a yet-unknown reader—beyond her circle of correspondents and beyond her own time as well. “My business is to sing,” she stated unequivocally.²¹ Writing poetry had become to her the work of a lifetime and as fundamental as breathing.

Emily was aware that her circle of preferred readers was not as available to her as they once had been. Sue was busy with the new baby, Fanny and Loo Norcross were still grieving their parents, and Samuel Bowles struggled with precarious health. Given life’s inevitable changes, she had fewer people to turn to. Vinnie was her strong supporter in everything, but her sister was not a serious judge of poetry, nor was Emily’s mother. Edward, too, was not one who could talk about her work. “Father,” she said, is “too busy with his Briefs – to notice what we do.”²² Helen Hunt might have provided an ear, but she and Emily were destined to be at cross-purposes. After the death of their firstborn, Helen and her husband had a second son, and all were living in Newport, Rhode Island. Helen and Edward had been in town recently and paid a call on the Dickinsons. Emily enjoyed meeting Edward Hunt; he was intelligent and quick with humorous observations. During their time together, a scrap of food had dropped from the table and Carlo gobbled it up. Your dog seems to understand gravity, Major Hunt had noted wryly.²³ Helen was a wit, too, and—although she had a joked about becoming a poet—she was an insightful reader. Around the tea table that afternoon, Emily might have excused herself and retrieved her fascicles to show Helen, but she did not.

Rev. Charles Wadsworth was another person who had moved beyond Emily’s reach. After Emily visited Philadelphia and became acquainted with the charismatic minister, the two had exchanged letters. No one knew how many. As far as anyone could tell, the mysterious relationship was not open to questions. Emily mentioned Reverend Wadsworth on a few occasions, but did not say much about a surprise call he had made when visiting friends nearby. His mother had recently died and he was dressed in mourning. “My Life is full of dark Secrets,” he had told Emily.²⁴ Whether her connection with Wadsworth revolved around pain, faith, or poetry no one knew. But those who were aware of their relationship recognized that the somber clergyman meant a great deal to her. He had written her once addressing an obscure crisis Emily said she was confronting. “My Dear Miss Dickenson,” he had written. “I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, – I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you. Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers. I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial – and though I have no right to intrude upon your sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word. In great haste Sincerely and most Affectionately Yours—.”²⁵ Wadsworth had left the letter unsigned and embossed it with his personal crest, “C. W.”‡ But now the minister—like so many others—was further away. He had resigned from his church and had accepted another assignment in San Francisco. With his wife and two children, Wadsworth was moving to minister at Calvary Church. The early months of 1862 had brought many losses and Emily looked at spring as a cruel affront. “I dreaded that first Robin, so,” she wrote in one poem, and called herself “The Queen of Calvary.”²⁶

Around the time of Wadsworth’s departure, an article appeared in the Springfield Republican that caught Emily’s eye. No doubt Dr. Holland wrote it, she thought; he usually reported on literary developments. Under the headline “Books, Authors and Art,” was a suggestion for reading. “Atlantic Monthly for April is one of the best numbers ever issued,” the column began. “Its leading article, T. W. Higginson’s Letter to a Young Contributor, ought to be read by all the would-be authors of the land. . . . It is a test of latent power. Whoever rises from its thorough perusal strengthened and encouraged, may be reasonably certain of unlimited success.”²⁷ Emily had heard of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He was a literary man whose essays on nature and the importance of exercise had often appeared in the Atlantic. Sue was familiar with him, too, and had once asked Sam Bowles to locate a photograph of him. After being dismissed from his pastorate in Newburyport for preaching too forcefully on abolition, Higginson had been living in Worcester, some fifty miles away. Emily’s uncle William Dickinson knew him. Within weeks of the Republican notice, the family copy of the Atlantic Monthly arrived and Emily flipped through the pages to Higginson’s essay. “My dear young gentleman or young lady,” the article began—a remarkable introduction considering he included women in advice to would-be writers. “No editor can ever afford the rejection of a good thing . . . as Ruskin says of painting that it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is made . . . there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence . . . Charge your style with life.” In the article, Higginson offered practical tips for novice writers: use good pens, black ink, white paper, don’t be hasty or slipshod, be neat, and avoid dashes. “Be neither too lax nor too precise in your use of language: the one fault ends in stiffness, the other in slang.” Don’t be pedantic, too mannered or stylish. Revise as much as you can and don’t be in a hurry. “‘Genius,’” he wrote, quoting the French writer Rivarol, “ ‘is only great patience.’” He spoke of the need for solitude and warned against fame and other distractions. “If a person once does a good thing, society forms a league to prevent his doing another. His seclusion is gone, and therefore his unconsciousness and his leisure . . . a wise man must have strength to call in his resources before middle-life, prune off divergent activities, and concentrate himself on the main work. . . . Literature is the attar of roses, one distilled drop from a million blossoms.” He urged writers to avoid looking to England for inspiration. We need new words, he said, look instead to Emerson. “The American writer finds himself among his phrases like an American sea-captain amid his crew: a medley of all nations, waiting for the strong organizing New England mind to mould them into a unit of force.” The article concluded with an appeal to patriotism: This “American literature of ours will be just as classic a thing, if we do our part . . . If, therefore, duty and opportunity call, count it a privilege to obtain your share.”²⁸

A few weeks later, on the morning of April 14, 1862, the Dickinson household bustled. Emily kept track of the family’s schedule and needed no reminder of the day’s importance. Once again, Edward was preparing to present official remarks—this time at the college. That afternoon at one thirty a dedication ceremony would take place for a cannon captured in the battle of Newbern. Brig. Gen. Ambrose Burnside himself gave it to Amherst College in memory of Frazar Stearns and other men who fell that day. So many people were expected for the ceremony that the railroad added extra cars to transport passengers from as far away as Boston. By noon Emily could hear the last carriages pulling into Amherst for the event. Someone estimated as many as one thousand people jostling for space on the terraces outside Johnson Chapel.²⁹ Everyone was straining for a glimpse of the cannon, draped in the Stars and Stripes and looking smaller than expected, less brutal somehow—a single barrel, burnished and smooth as glass. Precisely at 1:30 the ceremony began, and Edward spoke first. This moment is pregnant with suggestion, he declared. We are sorrowful, yet grateful. This dedication occurs on the anniversary of the Fort Sumter, he said, an attack that “startled the nation like a clap of thunder in a clear sky.”§³⁰ That alignment between then and now represents the way individual lives are tied to history, he said. We are all connected to the sweep of larger events, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. What ties us, he said, are “sacred associations”—the bond between the individual and the everlasting.

To many in the audience, the magnitude of the moment, the rush to see the cannon, and Edward’s remarks about “sacred associations” were indelible. They were a rallying cry to act. One person affected was a young chemistry professor hired to replace William Clark after he left to lead the Massachusetts 21st. The young professor wrote Clark afterward, telling him the ceremony stirred in him a feeling of greatness. I could almost imagine, he wrote, how it felt to jump atop the cannon and lead the charge. Later the young professor sat down with his wife and discussed their future. “You can better afford to have a country without a husband,” he told her, “than a husband without a country.” In a matter of weeks, he left the college and enlisted.^{¶ 31}

The next day, on April 15, 1862, Emily’s thoughts returned to Mr. Higginson’s article. His essay had all but invited writers to send samples of their work. She wondered if this literary man—a man she had never met—would be open to reading her verse. In many ways, the thought was preposterous. A professional writer and abolitionist whom many said was willing to use violence for political means—why would he be interested in a middle-aged woman writing alone in her father’s house? But Emily was at a juncture. The distance she felt from Sue, Austin, and Samuel Bowles grieved and stirred her. Frazar Stearns’s death gave life an even more fragile edge. Her father’s words about “sacred associations” incited in her a boldness to act. “To take the lead in bringing forward a new genius,” Mr. Higginson had written, “is . . . a privilege.”³² Emily never would describe herself as a “genius,” but she was confident in her work, and she made up her mind. She took out her poems—over thirty fascicles and dozens of unfinished drafts, hundreds of verses in all—and read opening lines, deciding which to send.

I taste a liquor never brewed –

From Tankards scooped in Pearl – ³³

Wild nights – Wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury! ³⁴

I can wade Grief –

Whole Pools of it – ³⁵

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul – ³⁶

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons – ³⁷

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – ³⁸

The Soul selects her own Society –

Then – shuts the Door –

To her divine Majority –

Present no more – ³⁹

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me – ⁴⁰

Some – keep the Sabbath – going to church –

I – keep it – staying at Home – ⁴¹

These poems would not do, she thought. She selected three others and set them aside: “We play at Paste – ”; “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – ”; and “The nearest Dream recedes – unrealized – .”#⁴² She wanted to include one more and studied the poem she had been working on so intently—“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.” Emily knew Sue liked the version published a few weeks before in the Republican. But Emily preferred another, the one with the apocalyptic second stanza and the image of dots on a disc of snow. The sweep was larger, she thought, more impressive, and the image one of her best. Emily copied the four poems and lifted out a sheet of paper for the accompanying letter. She debated about what to say, how much to tell, and what tone to assume. Don’t be too forward, Higginson had warned in the article. Draw near your editor with “soft approaches.”⁴³ Emily wondered if she should mention the hundreds of poems she had already written, the decade she had spent drafting and redrafting, the many verses she had shared with Fanny and Loo, Sue, the Hollands, and Samuel Bowles. She decided not to mention the poems that had already been published or the careful reading Susan had given to her alabaster verse. But she wanted to be clear with Mr. Higginson about what she thought poetry should do. Words had to live and breathe and spark a physical response. She remembered Sue’s reaction to the alabaster verse. “I always go to the fire and get warm after thinking of it, but I never can again.”⁴⁴ Poetry had to affect the body, Emily believed, and trigger a visceral response. She would never be content to reach only a reader’s mind and heart, she wanted to touch bone and muscle and nerve.

Mr. Higginson,

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?

The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask –

Should you think it breathed – and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude –

If I make the mistake – that you dared to tell me – would give me sincere honor – toward you –

I enclose me name – asking you, if you please – Sir – to tell me what is true?

That you will not betray me – it is needless to ask – since Honor is it’s own pawn – ⁴⁵

Emily did not sign the letter. She placed the four poems and the letter in an envelope, affixed two three-cent stamps to the top left, and wrote the address: “T. W. Higginson Worcester, Mass.” She had never sent poems to a stranger before: her action was unexpected and startling. The next day when Mr. Higginson opened the envelope, he was surprised by what he saw: an almost indecipherable scrawl, sentences strewn with dashes, and—strangest of all—no signature. Something else tumbled out: a smaller envelope inside the larger one. Higginson slipped his finger into the tiny packet and pulled out a card. There he found her name, written in pencil in the same hurried scribble as the letter. The card-in-an-envelope-in-another-envelope seemed a kind of game to him. Cat and mouse. A bold introduction and a hasty retreat. A correspondent who introduced herself and then promptly disappeared.⁴⁶ His wife had warned him about lending a hand to too many would-be writers, especially those he deemed “half-cracked poetesses.”⁴⁷ They took too much of his time, she cautioned, were an unnecessary burden, and downright odd. But Thomas Wentworth Higginson was intrigued. He took the letter home.

Emily Dickinson had no idea if Mr. Higginson would respond. In her room that day, she listened to the world around her: the creak of steps on the kitchen stairs, the muffled clop of horses’ hooves pulling carriages to the center of town, the sound of a distant train whistle. The ground that spring had softened and crocuses were starting to bloom. By late afternoon, a chorus of spring peepers would be chirping in nearby swamps. Occasionally, Emily’s reverie was punctured by the sound of blanks fired on the town common. College students and local men were mustering and practicing military drills. Last month there had been two musters. By August there would be many more.⁴⁸ Emily looked out her window and watched as Sue—busy with Ned—wheeled the little boy in his baby carriage. Big scruffy Carlo and two cats trotted behind as if in a grand parade.⁴⁹ Emily liked to observe the perambulations of people along Main Street. They always seemed busy and full of purpose. It was easy for her to feel distant from them—a “Nobody”—sitting as she so often did alone at the window, quiet and removed. But Emily knew something had changed. There was a letter with her poems sitting on Mr. Higginson’s desk in Worcester, Massachusetts. Now as she raised her eyes above the hemlock hedge, Emily watched—but this time she also waited.

* Charles Thompson lived with the Stearns family from the time he was fifteen until his marriage. He worked as a “choreboy” for the family and later as custodian at Amherst College, becoming inextricably connected to both the institution and the lives of students. When Thompson was courting his future wife, Frazar Stearns helped write his love letters. [Abigail Eloise Stearns Lee, “Prof. Charlie”: A Sketch of Charles Thompson, Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1898.]

† Dickinson consistently misspelled Frazar Stearns’s first name.

‡ Scholars have confirmed the handwriting in the letter (L248a) is Charles Wadsworth’s. While the letter is undated, Thomas Johnson theorizes it was sent in spring 1862. Other scholars concur that Wadsworth’s concern may address Dickinson’s “terror since September” and therefore could have been written in the 1861–1862 time frame. [Margaret Dakin, email to the author, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, April 3, 2017.]

§ Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861. The Amherst College cannon ceremony occurred on April 14, 1862.

¶ Newton Spaulding Manross enlisted July 22, 1862, and was killed two months later at Antietam on September 17, 1862.

# Ralph Franklin believes “We play at Paste” may have been written in direct response to Higginson’s article. [Ralph Franklin, ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 24.]