Before the Civil War began, John R. Thompson was probably best known among literary circles as a poet. His poetry took second place, though, to his work as a war correspondent for the Memphis appeal. Thompson would become one of the leading correspondents in the South. One of the distinctions of Thompson's work was that he reported not only on the political life of the Confederacy from his station in Richmond, but he also provided war correspondence. Thompson reported from his Virginia post until June 1864 when he was forced to leave the Confederacy and travel to England in order to recover from tuberculosis.