Ethel Beers publishes her poem "The Picket Guard" with its famous lines "All Quiet Along the Potomac"

Ethelinda Eliot Beers wrote the poem "The Picket Guard" in September 1861 and it was published in Harper's Weekly Magazine on November 30, 1861 under the initials "E.B."  Southerner John Holl Hewitt put the words to music and published the song in Columbia, South Carolina in 1862 and it became popular on both sides of the conflict  The Confederate soldier Lamar Fontaine claimed credit for the lyrics and although disputed ever since, evidence indicates that Beers was the actual author of the original poem.  (By John Osborne)