the building the prisoners were being held in. Byers thus became one of the first people to greet the Union Army when it captured Columbia on February 17. When Sherman entered the city around noon, Byers went up to Sherman and handed him a small slip of paper, telling Sherman to read it at his leisure. Sherman read the paper later that afternoon as he set up headquarters. On it he found Byer's poem, which deeply moved Sherman. He immediately promoted Byers to a member of his staff, and the two formed a lifelong friendship. After service on Sherman's staff, Byers was tasked with returning to Washington, where he became the first firsthand account about Sherman's victories in the Carolinas. The war ended soon thereafter. Post war life After his wartime service, Byers became a writer, and then a diplomat. He was American consul to Switzerland from 1869 to 1884 (a separate position from that of Ambassador). He wrote for Harper's magazine and the The Magazine of American History. He was a prolific author, he wrote Switzerland and the Swiss and Twenty Years in Europe as a result of his diplomatic service. His works on the Civil War included What I Saw in Dixie: Or Sixteen Months in Rebel Prisons, Iowa in Wartime, With Fire and Sword, and contributions to the Annals of Iowa. He also wrote several volumes of poetry, with many poems about his native Iowa. His poem The Song of Iowa was adopted as the state song of Iowa in 1911. The idea of turning the poem into a song came about after he heard Confederate soldiers playing "Maryland, My Maryland" to the tune of "O Tannenbaum" outside his military prison cell. Byers moved to Los Angeles in his later years, and wrote poetry for the Los Angeles Times. He died there on May 24, 1933. References Union Army officers People of Iowa in the American Civil War People from Iowa 19th-century American lawyers 1838 births 1933 deaths Writers from Pennsylvania