A Soldier Poet: Toby Greene and Battle-Pieces

Among Melville's Battle Pieces are his "Verses Inscriptive and Memorial," including a poem entitled "On the Home Guards Who Perished in Defense of Lexington, Missouri." This verse is a curiosity, for it celebrates no great battle or general, but state militia involved in an obscure Union defeat in 1861. This note suggests that inspiration for the poem came from Melville's old shipmate, Richard "Toby" Greene, based on new information about Greene's military service in Missouri at that time, such as a poem Greene published while serving as co-editor of a soldier newspaper. The note also argues that Greene may have influenced other poems in Battle Pieces, based on his personal editorials, experiences, and acquaintances in the western theatre of the Civil War, and suggests that the shared experience of traveling through territory controlled by Confederate guerillas may have prompted Melville to include Toby as a fictional character in "A Scout Toward Aldie."