Abram Joseph Ryan was an American Catholic priest and poet. He was an active proponent of the Confederate States of America.
Background
Abram Joseph Ryan was the son of Matthew and Mary (Coughlin) Ryan, who emigrated from Clonmell, Ireland, to Norfolk, Va. , some time between 1828 and 1838. From there they soon moved to Hagerstown, Md. , where Abram was born. While claims to his birthplace have been put forth in behalf of Norfolk and also in behalf of Rathkeale and Limerick, Ireland, and while various dates have been given for his birth, the baptismal record in Hagerstown, the Vincentian records at Germantown, Pa. , and a letter of February 21, 1859, in which he notes his age as twenty-one years, all indicate that he was born at Hagerstown on February 5, 1838. Seeking their fortunes in the West, the Ryans settled in St. Louis, Mo. , where a daughter, Ellenor (d. 1856), entered the community of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet as Sister Mary Herman.
Education
Abram attended the Christian Brothers' school and studied theology at Niagara University, Niagara Falls, N. Y. , under the Vincentian Fathers, whose novitiate in Germantown, Pa. , he entered in 1854. In November 1, 1856, Ryan took his solemn vows.
Career
After completing his work in theology, Ryan taught at Niagara University and at the diocesan seminary at Cape Girardeau, Mo. , until, on September 1, 1862, he joined the Confederate service as a freelance chaplain. An impulsive, mystic person of deep spiritual sense and humanitarian interests, Father Ryan shrived the dying on the battlefield and carried the wounded to safety, through the years of "victory and defeat until the Conquered Banner was furled at Appomattox. "
At Gratiot prison in New Orleans, when the chaplain fled and no other minister would accept the assignment, it was Ryan who appeared and ministered to the smallpox victims. Of himself he had no thought; and of death he had no fear. Touched by a Celtic melancholy, after a favorite younger brother was killed in his gray uniform, Ryan wrote "In Memory of My Brother" and "In Memoriam. "
When the war was over, he wrote the beautiful, pathetic verses of "The Conquered Banner" to the measures of a Gregorian hymn (Freeman's Journal, New York, May 19, 1866), and the "Sword of Robert E. Lee, " which were long sung in households and schools of the Southland. These were followed by "The Lost Cause, " "Gather the Sacred Dust, " "March of the Deathless Dead, " and similar lyrics. He thus became the recognized poet of the Confederacy, described by Robert Taylor of Tennessee in his lecture on "The Blue and Gray" as "the Tom Moore of Dixie, whose spirit shall keep watch over the Stars and Bars until the morning of the Resurrection. "
After the war, Father Ryan lived for a time near Beauvoir, Miss. , in terms of friendly intimacy with the family of Jefferson Davis. Irreconcilable and unreconstructed until the North joined in relief work during the cholera plague in the South in 1878, he finally sang forgiveness in the poem "Reunited. "
For a time, he edited the ephemeral Pacificator in Augusta, Ga. , where he was stationed as a curate at St. Patrick's Church, and later, The Banner of the South, in which he was apparently assisted by John Quinn, an Irish schoolmaster. His health compelled him to discontinue the paper five years later, though as a pastor in New Orleans he again edited a Catholic weekly, The Star.
He was constantly on the move and served in his priestly capacity at Biloxi, Miss. , Nashville, Knoxville, and Clarksville, Tenn. , Macon, Ga. , and finally at Mobile, Ala. , where he was pastor of St. Mary's Church (1870 - 83). He made frequent lecture tours through the United States, and into Canada and Mexico, at times for the relief of Southern orphans and widows or of the victims of recurrent plagues. His audiences were as greatly interested in seeing him as in hearing him; he is described as somewhat stooped, with black hair reaching to his shoulders, pensive, sad, unworldly.
Going to the Franciscan monastery in Louisville for religious quiet, he died there, leaving an incomplete manuscript on the life of Christ. His remains were interred in Mobile, where a monument has been erected by the children of the South through a dime collection which the Mobile Register promoted.
