Confederate journalist and poet John Reuben Thompson was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1823. Thompson had originally embarked on a legal career, but from 1847 to 1860 he had been editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, the most important literary periodical in the antebellum south, and then for a few months, of the Southern Field and Fireside.

After the Civil War started, he became assistant secretary of the, Commonwealth of Virginia, and also helped edit the Richmond Record and the Southern illustrated News. As well as these activities, he found time to write poems like 'The Burial of Latane', 'Music in Camp', 'Ashby' and 'Lee to the Rear'. In addition he was the Richmond correspondent of the Index, the Confederate newspaper started in London in May 1862 by Henry Hotze.