All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight

Overview

The poem was first published as "The Picket Guard" in the Harper's Weekly issue dated November 30, 1861. It attributed only to "E.B." It was reprinted broadly both with that attribution and without, leading to many spurious claims of authorship. On July 4, 1863, Harper's Weekly told its readers that the poem had been written for the paper by a lady contributor whom it later identified as Beers.

The poem was based on newspaper reports of "all is quiet tonight", which was based on official telegrams sent to the Secretary of War by Major-General George B. McClellan following the First Battle of Bull Run. Beers noticed that the report was followed by a small item telling of a picket being killed. She wrote the poem that same morning, and she read it in September 1861.

In 1863, the poem was set to music by John Hill Hewitt, himself a poet, newspaperman, and musician, who was serving in the Confederate army. This song may have inspired the title of the English translation of Erich Maria Remarque's World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

"The Picket-Guard"

"The Picket-Guard", Harper's Weekly, 1861:

"All quiet along the Potomac," they say, Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, 'T is nothing—a private or two, now and then, Not an officer lost—only one of the men, All quiet along the Potomac to-night, Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night wind While stars up above, with their glittering eyes, There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed, His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then, Leaped up to his lips—when low, murmured vows Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes, And gathers his gun closer up to its place, He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,— Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light, Hark! was it the night wind that rustled the leaves? It looked like a rifle—"Ha! Mary, good-by!" All quiet along the Potomac to-night,— While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,—