Joseph Blythe Allston

(1833-1904)
South Carolina

"JOSEPH BLYTHE ALLSTON was born at 'Waverly,' the plantation of his father, General Joseph Allston, near Georgetown, South Carolina, February 8, 1833, and died in Anderson, South Carolina, January 29, 1904. His parents having died while he was quite young, he was brought up by his uncle, Governor R.F.W. Allston. In 1851 he graduated at South Carolina College, and after reading law in the office of the great jurist, James Louis Petigru, of Charleston, he was admitted to the bar in 1854. He then resided abroad for several years. In 1857 he married Miss Mary North, a niece of Mr. Petigru, and entered upon the practice of law in Charleston. At the outbreak of the war between the sections in 1861 he volunteered and served for four years in the Twenty-seventh Regiment of South Carolina, attaining the rank of captain. About a month before the close of the war he was captured and imprisoned in Fort Delaware, where he wrote his beautiful and pathetic poem, 'Stack Arms!' In 1865 he removed to Georgetown and subsequently to Baltimore for the practice of his profession. Some years ago he retired to his farm, historic 'Badwell,' the former home of Mr. Petigru, in Abbeville County."

[George Armstrong Wauchope, The Writers of South Carolina: With a Critical Introduction, Biographical Sketches, and Selections in Prose and Verse 85 (Columbia, South Carolina: The State Co., Publishers, 1910)] [online text]

Palmetto Poets: Joseph Blythe Allston

A palmetto tree in Charleston, South Carolina.

[John Gilmary Shea, The Story of a Great Nation
(New York: Gay Brothers & Company, 1886)]

[Used with permission of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology]

Poetry