Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[217] at eighteen that though he was conscious of having “an extraordinary musical talent,” yet music seemed to him “so small a business in comparison with other things” which he might do, that he wished to forsake the art. It appears from the same note-book that he already felt himself called to a literary career. He was at that time a student at Oglethorpe College, a Presbyterian institution, now extinct, near Midway, Ga. Here he graduated at eighteen, with the first honors of his class, although he had lost a year during which he was a clerk in the post-office at Macon. Lanier became a tutor in the college on graduating, but left his post to enlist as a private in the Confederate army.

He enlisted in the Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion, the first military force which left Georgia for the seat of war. He remained in the service during the whole war, and, though three times offered promotion, would never accept it, from a desire to remain near his younger brother, who was in the same regiment. He was in the battle of Seven Pines, that of Drewry's Bluffs, and the seven days of fighting about Richmond, Va., including Malvern Hill.