authors, including three poems by Alice Cary, and for his oft-quoted editorial supporting greater appreciation of the role of women in the study of history and literature. Ryan remained editor of The Banner of the South until 1870. According to David O'Connell, Bishop "Verot dismissed Ryan from his editorial functions in March 1870, and then banished him from the diocese altogether" due to Ryan's continued contentious editorials against "real and imagined foes," with a chief area of concern being "Ryan's opposition to Reconstruction acts, including voting rights for blacks." In June 1870, Ryan received an appointment to the Diocese of Mobile, and he began his priestly duties there. On June 23, 1870, Ryan gave the baccalaureate address at Springhill College in Mobile. While still living in Mobile, in January 1871, Ryan was added to the editorial force of The Morning Star and Catholic Messenger, the official paper of the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. In February 1872, Ryan became its editor-in-chief. Ryan's contributions to this newspaper included poetic, religious, and political writings. Ryan remained editor-in-chief until 1875. He continued to write poems in the Lost Cause style for the next two decades. Among the more memorable are "C.S.A.", "The Sword of Robert E. Lee", and "The South". All centered on themes of heroic martyrdom by men pledged to defend their native land against a tyrannical invader. As one line goes, "There's grandeur in graves, there's glory in gloom." Within the limits of the Southern Confederacy and the Catholic Church in the United States, no poet was more popular. Ryan also penned a large number of verses about his faith and spirituality, such as "The Seen and the Unseen" and "Sea Dreamings," which reached a nationwide audience in The Saturday Evening Post (January 13, 1883, p. 13). In 1879, Ryan's work was gathered into a collected volume of verse, first titled Father Ryan's Poems and subsequently republished in 1880 as Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous. His collection sold remarkably well for the next half-century, going through more than forty reprintings and editions by the late 1930s. Ryan's work also found a popular following in his family's ancestral home of Ireland. An article about his work appeared in Irish Monthly during his life, and a decade after his death, yet another collection of his poetry was published in Dublin by The Talbot Press under the title Selected Poems of Father Abram Ryan. Editorials