Mrs. Beers's right to the authorship of this famous song has been very severely contested, but there seems to be no reason now to doubt that the really fine poem is hers. Though there have been numerous claimants for its authorship, the one who has come nearest to carrying the day is, strange to say, a Southerner. It is curious indeed that a war song should be claimed by both sides, but that has been the story of this song. This Southerner is Lamar Fontaine. Mr. Fontaine was born at Gay Hill, Texas. Twenty years before the war his father moved to Austin, Texas, and was secretary to General Lamar, for whom the son was named. When the war broke out this young Lamar Fontaine became a major in the Confederate Army. Some time in 1862, when the poem _All Quiet Along the Potomac_ appeared in a Southern newspaper, Lamar Fontaine's name was attached to it. Davidson, the author of _Living Writers of the South_, wrote to Fontaine in regard to the authorship of this hymn, and in replying Fontaine said: "The poem in question was written by me while our army lay at Fairfax Courthouse, or rather the greater portion, in and around that place. On the second day of August, 1861, I first read it to a few of my messmates in Company I, Second Virginia Cavalry. During the month of August I gave away many manuscript copies to soldiers, and some few to ladies in and about Leesburg, Loudon County, Virginia. In fact, I think that most of the men belonging to the Second Virginia, then commanded by Colonel Radford, were aware of the fact that I was the author of it. I never saw the piece in print until just before the battle of Leesburg (October 21, 1861), and then it was in a Northern paper with the notice that it had been found on the dead body of a picket. I hope the controversy between myself and others in regard to _All Quiet Along the Potomac To-night_, will soon be forever settled. I wrote it, and the world knows it; and they may howl over it, and give it to as many authors as they please. I wrote it, and I am a Southern man, and I am proud of the title, and am glad that my children will know that the South was the birthplace of their fathers, from their generation back to the seventh." Another Southern man, however, and a distinguished one, puts a very different look on the case. Mr. Chandler Harris of Georgia writes a letter for insertion in Mr. Davidson's volume in the course of which he says: "After a careful and impartial investigation of all the facts in my reach, I have come to the conclusion that Mrs. Beers, and not Mr. Fontaine, wrote the poem in question. My reasons for believing that Mr. Fontaine is not the author of _All Quiet_, are several: "1. The poem appeared in _Harper's Weekly_ for November 30, 1861, as _The Picket Guard_, over the initials of Mrs. Ethel Beers of New York. [Illustration: _MOUNT VERNON_] "2. It did not make its appearance in any Southern paper until about April or May, 1862.