O'Hara, Theodore

Theodore (1820-1867), an American soldier, journalist, and poet. He was born at Danville, Kentucky. He was educated for the profession of law, but held a position in the United States Treasury Department and went to the Mexican war as a captain. He went with Walker on his adventurous Central American expedition. On his return he engaged in journalism, editing the Mobile Register, and other papers. During the Civil War he served on the staff of Albert Sidney Johnston and later with John C. Breckenridge. After the war he settled on a plantation in Alabama, where he died in 1867. A few years later the legislature of Kentucky ordered his remains brought back at public expense and interred in the state cemetery at Frankfort. O'Hara was a brilliant writer, but he has not left a large amount of permanent literature. Two poems are remembered, A Dirge for the Brave Old Pioneer, and The Bivouac of the Dead. The latter was written to commemorate the death of his comrades in the Mexican War, and was read by him on the occasion of their burial at Frankfort in the cemetery where he himself rests. The opening stanza, which we give, is inscribed on the gateway of the national cemetery at Arlington where thousands of unknown heroes lie buried. The lines seem equally appropriate above the wearers of the gray who rest in the cemetery at New Orleans.