Francis M. Finch
From Atlantic Monthly
The Blue and the Gray, a Civil War poem of reconciliation by Francis M. Finch, former Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. Finch read a news item in New York Tribune describing how the women of Columbus, Mississippi, “strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National Soldiers.” Inspired by this report, he wrote this poem that was published in the Atlantic Monthly in September, 1867. It immediately struck a chord with the American public. For many years after the war, the poem was read at the grave-side of Civil War soldiers during Memorial Day ceremonies, usually by a young girl in a white dress.