Who now shall sneer? In a letter to Mr. J.B. Thayer, who had by James Russell Lowell

This poem fragment — actually a strophe from Lowell's broader elegy on the Civil War — responds to British critics who labeled the Union Army as a ragtag group of working-class nobodies. Penned in the deep sorrow of losing his nephew Willie in battle, Lowell argues that the everyday men who lay down their lives for a cause demonstrate their value in the most lasting way imaginable. The strophe serves as a challenge: feel free to mock tailors' apprentices and butcher boys — their sacrifice speaks for itself.

The tone is both defiant and tinged with grief. Lowell is angry — openly and honestly angry — but that anger is tempered by sorrow. It feels less like a rant and more like a man quietly challenging someone to repeat an insult at a graveside. Beneath it all, there's a sense of pride that comes from witnessing the people you love rise to the occasion in the toughest of times.

James Russell Lowell crafted this strophe for his *Commemoration Ode*, which he delivered at Harvard in July 1865 to pay tribute to the students and alumni who lost their lives in the Civil War. Lowell had a personal connection to the conflict: his nephew, William Lowell Putnam, was killed at Ball's Bluff in 1861. During the early years of the war, the British press often questioned the Union cause and displayed disdain for the social class of its volunteers, a perspective that angered many Americans. As one of the leading literary figures in the country and editor of *The Atlantic Monthly*, Lowell used the ode as both a public tribute and a sharp response. His letter to J.B. Thayer, referenced in the headnote, reveals his awareness of the strophe's limitations while still defending its emotional sincerity.