July 23, 1838 [Pulaski, Pennsylvania] – May 24, 1933[Los Angeles, California]
[Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers (b. July 23, 1838) was a poet, author, U.S. diplomat, and Civil War veteran. His came to Oskaloosa, Iowa with his father in 1853 and studied law with a local attorney, gaining admittance to the bar in 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted with Company B of the 5th Iowa Infantry. Following the battle of Missionary Ridge (Chattanooga, TN) he was taken prisoner and sent to Libby Prison. After a succession of prison transfers and and two brief escapes (Macon, GA, Charleston, SC, and “Camp Sorghum” near Columbia, SC), Byers was moved with a group of prisoners to “Camp Asylum”, an old mental hospital at Columbia. While imprisoned here he wrote the poem for which he would become nationally known–“Sherman’s March to the Sea”. A copy of this work was famously smuggled out of the camp in the artifical leg of exchanged prisoner Lt. Daniel Tower, after which it became widely circulated and its title popularly adopted for William Tecumseh Sherman’s Savannah Campaign. Samuel Byers made a successful escape from the asylum prison and when General Sherman entered Columbia the two met. The General made Byers part of his staff and the two maintained a lifelong friendship. Byers was eventually made a Brevet-Major by commission of Iowa Governor William M. Stone. After the war, Byers served as a U.S. consul in Switzerland and Italy from 1869 to 1892. He also continued to write and publish poetry, and authored the following books based upon his wartime and diplomatic experiences: “What I Saw in Dixie: Or Sixteen Months in Rebel Prisons” (1868), “With Fire and Sword: The American Civil War Experience of a Soldier of the 5th Iowa Infantry” (1911), “Iowa in Wartime” (1888), “Switzerland and the Swiss” (1875), and “Twenty Years in Europe: A Consul General’s Memories of Noted People, with Letters from General W.T. Sherman” (1900). He wrote the lyrics for “Song of Iowa” (adopted as the state song in 1911), and after moving to California wrote poetry for the Los Angeles Times. S.H.M. Byers died in Los Angeles on May 24, 1933.]
