After growing up in the home of his uncle, Robert Young Hayne, and practicing law for a short time, Hayne wrote for the Charleston Evening News and the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger and was associate editor of the weekly Southern Literary Gazette. His first collected poems were published at his own expense in 1855. He was coeditor of the influential Russell's Magazine, launched under the leadership of William Gilmore Simms, during its three years of publication (1857–60). During the Civil War he contributed verse supporting the Southern cause—notably “The Battle of Charleston Harbor”—to the Southern Illustrated News of Richmond. After the war, his home having burned and with his fortune lost, Hayne and his family moved to a shanty at Copse Hill near Augusta, Ga., where he earned his living writing prose and wrote some poetry. Hayne's published works include: Sonnets and Other Poems (1857), Legends and Lyrics (1872), The Mountain of the Lovers (1875), and The Broken Battalions (1885).