Abram Joseph Ryan
While he never formally joined the army, he served as a freelance chaplain for the last two years of the war for both North and South soldiers, during which time his enlisted brother was killed.
The family had initially settled in Norfolk, Virginia, after their arrival in America sometime prior to 1835, but soon moved to Maryland, where the father obtained work as the overseer of a plantation with enslaved people.
Ryan decided to test a calling to the priesthood and on September 16, 1851, at the age of 13, entered the College of St. Mary's of the Barrens, near Perryville, Missouri.
It was run by the Vincentian Fathers as a minor seminary for young candidates for the priesthood, providing them a classical education with free room and board.
In the summer of 1854, Ryan decided to pursue Holy Orders, at which time he explained his decision to his close childhood friend, Ethel, with whom he had grown up.
He was sent there both to pursue his study of theology and to serve as the prefect of discipline for the boys enrolled at the preparatory school attached to the seminary.
In January 1859 he wrote his Provincial Superior, complaining that the expected instruction in theology was not being done and about the weight of his workload with the boys, being alone in this task.
A reply counseling patience brought another request for a change of the situation, which included a veiled hint at the possibility of his leaving the Congregation.
Ryan was satisfied to be allowed to resume his own studies, and his younger brother, David, now also a member of the Congregation, was assigned to assist him.
He joined in sentiments expressed by Catholic bishops and editors in the United States in that period, who felt threatened by the anti-Catholic opinions voiced by the leadership of the Abolitionists.
He was ordained a deacon that summer after which he was chosen to accompany a group of Vincentian priests on a preaching tour of the rural parishes of the region in order to revive devotion to the faith.
His abilities as a preacher gained wide approval, and his superiors decided to have him ordained a priest earlier than was the normal age under church law.
He determined to sign the release forms on that following September 1 and immediately returned home, where he was soon joined by his brother David, who had left the seminary in New York with the intention of enlisting in the Confederate Army.
Some circumstantial evidence supports Lucey's position: Ryan's handwritten entries disappeared from the St. Mary's Seminary house diary for a full month after the battle of First Manassas, for example, during a period when the Archbishop of New Orleans was actively recruiting freelance (unofficial) Catholic chaplains to serve Louisiana troops.
And in a newspaper account of his 1883 sermon in Alexandria, Virginia, Ryan was quoted as having mentioned his ministry to Louisiana soldiers during the war.
On June 24, 1865, his most famous poem, "The Conquered Banner", appeared in the pages of the New York Freeman's Journal over his early pen-name "Moina."
Because the same pen-name had been used by the southern balladeer Anna Dinnies, the anthologist William Gilmore Simms mistakenly attributed "The Conquered Banner" to her, prompting the Freeman's Journal to reprint the poem over Ryan's name a year later.
Published only months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, "The Conquered Banner" captured the spirit of sentimentality and martyrdom then rising in the South.
In Augusta, Georgia, in March 1868, Ryan founded The Banner of the South, with the approval of Bishop Augustin Verot of Savannah, Georgia,[2] a religious and political weekly in which he additionally republished much of his early poetry, along with poetry by fellow-southerners James Ryder Randall, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Sidney Lanier, as well as an early story by Mark Twain.
Ryan also penned a large number of verses about his faith and spirituality, such as "The Seen and the Unseen" and "Sea Dreamings," which reached a nationwide audience in The Saturday Evening Post (January 13, 1883, p. 13).
An article about his work appeared in Irish Monthly during his life, and a decade after his death, yet another collection of his poetry was published in Dublin by The Talbot Press under the title Selected Poems of Father Abram Ryan.
"[3] Ryan also responded to the efforts of General Beauregard and others in the Louisiana Unification Movement to bring integration and reconciliation to the South.
Ryan wrote: "We protest against that particular resolution of the meeting which endorses and recommends the indiscriminate mingling of white and colored children in the same institutions of education.
... Would General Beauregard, who is a Catholic as well as a Southern man, would he allow a child of his to go to school and associate there on terms of equality as a scholar with colored children?
A Catholic priest was supposed to refrain from direct involvement in politics, and Ryan's speech to the White Leaguers clearly violated this ban.
The behind-the-scenes movement to silence Ryan was now revived, but it would take a few more months to complete his removal [as editor at The Morning Star and Catholic Messenger by Bishop Perché].
These became so popular that Bachrach ran a classified advertisement in the Baltimore Sun recommending photographs of Ryan as Christmas gifts.
In November 1882, Ryan returned to the north for an extended lecture tour that included appearances in Boston, New York, Montreal, Kingston, and Providence, Rhode Island.
Ryan died April 22, 1886, at a Franciscan friary in Louisville, Kentucky, but his body was returned to St. Mary's in Mobile for burial.
He charmed gatherings there with his wit and seldom needed much urging to recite his 'Sword of Lee' or his deathless 'Conquered Banner,' which never failed to make the ladies cry.
