Abram Joseph Ryan (born Matthew Abraham Ryan; February 5, 1838 – April 22, 1886) was an American Catholic poet, priest, journalist, orator, and former Vincentian. Historians disagree on whether Ryan served as a military chaplain for the Confederate States of America. He has been called the "Poet-Priest of the South" and the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy".
Ryan was born in Maryland to Irish Catholic immigrants. He attended a Christian Brothers school in Missouri, and then, at the age of 13, he attended a seminary run by the Vincentians. He entered the order and was sent to seminary in New York to study theology and oversee the boys in the seminary's school.
Vocally opposed to abolitionism, he was sent back to Missouri. Having gained experience as a preacher in rural areas, Ryan was ordained in 1860. After the American Civil War broke out, he went back and forth a few times between New York and Missouri, and then to Illinois, leaving the Vincentians. While he never formally joined the army, he served as a freelance chaplain for the last two years of the war for both North and South soldiers, during which time his enlisted brother was killed.
Ryan had been writing poetry since his college days, and his "The Conquered Banner" was printed in June 1865. He moved from one parish in the South to another, writing poetry and sermons. He founded a journal which published mainly Southern writers, and published a volume of his own collected poetry which was popular in the US and in Ireland. He died in 1886 in Kentucky and was buried in Mobile, Alabama.
Early life He was born Matthew Abraham Ryan in Hagerstown, Maryland on February 5, 1838, the fourth child of Irish immigrants Matthew Ryan and Mary Coughlin, both of Clogheen, County Tipperary. He was their first child to be born in the United States. The family had initially settled in Norfolk, Virginia, after their arrival in America sometime prior to 1835, but soon moved to Maryland, where the father obtained work as the overseer of a plantation with enslaved people. Ryan was named after this plantation's owner.
In 1840 the family relocated to Ralls County, Missouri, and then, in 1846, to St. Louis, where the father opened a general store. The young Abraham Ryan, as he was called, was educated at St. Joseph's Academy, run by the Christian Brothers. Showing a strong inclination to piety, he was encouraged by his mother and teachers to consider becoming a priest. Ryan decided to test a calling to the priesthood and on September 16, 1851, at the age of 13, entered the College of St. Mary's of the Barrens, near Perryville, Missouri. It was run by the Vincentian Fathers as a minor seminary for young candidates for the priesthood, providing them a classical education with free room and board.
In the summer of 1854, Ryan decided to pursue Holy Orders, at which time he explained his decision to his close childhood friend, Ethel, with whom he had grown up. At the end of that summer, Ethel announced her decision to become a nun, later becoming Sister Mary Loretto. Ryan later considered Ethel his "spiritual wife". On September 12, 1860, Ryan was ordained as a Vincentian Catholic priest.
Vincentian ministry
Ryan entered the Vincentians, taking the oath of obedience to the Congregation. He did three more years of study at the college during the course of which, on June 19, 1857, he received minor orders. The poetry that he wrote to entertain his schoolmates impressed them, especially one who recorded the texts in a personal journal. In 1858, shortly after the death of his father, Ryan was sent to the Seminary of Our Lady of the Angels near Niagara Falls, New York. He was sent there both to pursue his study of theology and to serve as the prefect of discipline for the boys enrolled at the preparatory school attached to the seminary.
Ryan soon showed signs of discontent with his situation there. In January 1859 he wrote his Provincial Superior, complaining that the expected instruction in theology was not being done and about the weight of his workload with the boys, being alone in this task. A reply counseling patience brought another request for a change of the situation, which included a veiled hint at the possibility of his leaving the Congregation. Ryan was satisfied to be allowed to resume his own studies, and his younger brother, David, now also a member of the Congregation, was assigned to assist him.
The Ryan brothers felt out of place as Southerners at the Western New York seminary. Abraham Ryan soon began to express his opposition to the abolitionist movement which had gained strength in the Northeast. He joined in sentiments expressed by Catholic bishops and editors in the United States in that period, who felt threatened by the anti-Catholic opinions voiced by the leadership of the Abolitionists. His writings in that period began to express suspicion of Northern goals. Possibly for that reason, Ryan was sent back to St. Mary of the Barrens, as their superiors might have decided to keep the brothers separated.
During the winter of 1860, Ryan gave a lecture series through which he started to gain notice as a speaker. He was ordained a deacon that summer after which he was chosen to accompany a group of Vincentian priests on a preaching tour of the rural parishes of the region in order to revive devotion to the faith. His abilities as a preacher gained wide approval, and his superiors decided to have him ordained a priest earlier than was the normal age under church law. Having gained the permission of the Holy See, on September 12, 1860, he was ordained a priest. The ceremony took place at his home parish in St. Louis, with the ordination being performed by the Bishop of St. Louis, Peter Richard Kenrick, with his mother and siblings in attendance.
Ryan spent the rest of the summer on another preaching tour, this time in the company of his Provincial Superior. Conflict arose during the course of the tour as the superior felt that Ryan's preaching was not fully spiritually centered, and Ryan felt the criticism keenly. As a new priest, he was assigned to teach theology at St. Mary's of the Barrens.
He was also listed in 1860–61 on the faculty roster of St. Vincent's College in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Founded in 1843, St. Vincent's was the forerunner of De Paul University in Chicago, now the nation's largest Catholic university. Frequent bouts of illness, however, kept Ryan confined to bed until the following spring. It was at that time that the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln took place. Ryan was so incensed at being called by the same name as the new president, whom he despised, that he began to use the shortened version by which he had been called as a boy, the form by which he became known in history.
In the fall of 1861, soon after the start of the American Civil War, Ryan was transferred back to Our Lady of the Angels Seminary in New York but remained there for only a month before once more falling ill. He was allowed to go to his mother's home in St. Louis to rest. He returned to New York to teach at the start of 1862 but soon fell ill again and was allowed to go back home. In April he declared himself fit to teach again, but his superiors instead transferred him to parish duties in La Salle, Illinois.
After arriving there, Ryan realized that he would not be able to express his strong views in support of the Confederacy. Frustrated, and feeling ignored by his immediate superior, he wrote directly to the Superior General of the Congregation in Paris, asking to be released from his vows. He pleaded his poor health and his personal conflict with the Provincial Superior. After not receiving a reply, he sent a second request, to which he received a positive response the following August. He determined to sign the release forms on that following September 1 and immediately returned home, where he was soon joined by his brother David, who had left the seminary in New York with the intention of enlisting in the Confederate Army.
Civil War service Early researcher Joseph McKey believed that Ryan took occasional periods of sick leave from these positions due to bouts of neuralgia, but Ryan's friend, J. M. Lucey, and several other clerical contemporaries believed that Ryan had made sporadic early appearances as a freelance chaplain among Confederate troops from Louisiana. Some circumstantial evidence supports Lucey's position: Ryan's handwritten entries disappeared from the St. Mary's Seminary house diary for a full month after the battle of First Manassas, for example, during a period when the Archbishop of New Orleans was actively recruiting freelance (unofficial) Catholic chaplains to serve Louisiana troops. And in a newspaper account of his 1883 sermon in Alexandria, Virginia, Ryan was quoted as having mentioned his ministry to Louisiana soldiers during the war. Tennessee historian Thomas Stritch confirms that Ryan began making appearances in Tennessee in 1862, even while his official postings were in Niagara and Illinois, and these absences from his northern posts may have been the underlying cause of his frequent reassignments. During one of these absences, in October 1862, Ryan was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee by Union authorities for making "seditious utterances".
Ryan began full-time pastoral duties in Tennessee in late 1863 or early 1864. Though he never formally joined the Confederate Army, he clearly was serving as a freelance chaplain by the last two years of the conflict, with possible appearances at the Battle of Lookout Mountain and the Battle of Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga (both in late November 1863), and well-authenticated service at the Battle of Franklin (November 1864) and the subsequent Battle of Nashville (December 1864). Some of his poems—"In Memoriam" and "In Memory of My Brother"—came in response to his brother's death, who died while serving in uniform for the Confederacy in April 1863, probably from injuries suffered during fighting near Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.
Postbellum
On June 24, 1865, his most famous poem, "The Conquered Banner", appeared in the pages of the New York Freeman's Journal over his early pen-name "Moina". Because the same pen-name had been used by the southern balladeer Anna Dinnies, the anthologist William Gilmore Simms mistakenly attributed "The Conquered Banner" to her, prompting the Freeman's Journal to reprint the poem over Ryan's name a year later. Published only months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, "The Conquered Banner" captured the spirit of sentimentality and martyrdom then rising in the South. Its metrical measure was taken, he once told a friend, from one of the Gregorian hymns. Within months, it was being recited or sung everywhere from parlors.
Starting in 1865, near the war's end, Ryan moved from parish to parish throughout the South, moving from a brief posting in Clarksville, Tennessee (November 1864-March 1865), with subsequent stays in Knoxville (April 1865-December 1867), Augusta Georgia (January 1868-April 1870), and a lengthier tenure in Mobile, Alabama (June 1870-October 1880). He then spent a year in semi-retirement at Biloxi, Mississippi (November 1881-October 1882) while completing his second book, A Crown for Our Queen.