FAMILY HISTORY: POETRY Collection written by Elsie Strawn ARMSTRONG
  
  File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Les Howard Strawn
  
  Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
  http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/somerset/
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  Oh! This cruel war!
      'Tis horrible to tell!
  Forty thousand men,
      In one battle fell!
  
  From the fifth to the tenth
      Of this bloody month of May,
  Seventy-five thousand men
      On the battlefield lay.
  
  Some said that ninety thousand
      Of our nation then were slain,
  All for abolition
      Without profit, cause or gain.
  
  Twenty-eight thousand
      To hospitals were sent,
  To amputate their limbs,
      Surgeons to them went.
  
  Some were so badly wounded,
      They could not get away,
  And in the scorching sun
      Two days they had to lay.
  
  Without one bite of food
      Of any sort or kind,
  Nor yet one drop of water
      To cheer their fainting mind.
  
  How many more lay dead,
      To decompose and rot,
  For dogs and wolves to eat,
      The numbers we have not.
  
  With stumps of legs and arms
      Upon the naked floor,
  Without a sheet beneath them,
      Or blanket to spread o'er.
  
  They could find no help
      In the sanitary stores,
  Neither rag nor bandage
      To dress their mortal sores.
  
  And there they had to lie,
      In their clothes all stiff with blood,
  Oh! Grant our rulers wisdom,    Have mercy, O, my God!
  
  They must lie in wait and agony
      Till relieved by death's sleep,
  I must try to dry my tears,
      For it is no use to weep.
  
  All this to free the Negroes
      And scatter them abroad,
  Away from their kind masters,
      O, What a wicked fraud!
  
  They'll find their Yankee taskmasters
      Will work them twice as hard,
  Because they're not their property
      Their lives they'll not regard.
  
  Their masters who have raised them,
      Whose property they are,
  For their health and lives
      Will have ten times the care.
  
  In the Sunny South
      Is their proper place,
  Because from head to foot,
      They are an inferior race.
  
  They never have sustained themselves,
      And they never can,
  For they were made for servants
      To superior man.
  
  And since the proclamation,
      Thousands of them are dying,
  And 'tis not far from here
      Some most piteously crying.
  
  And say they were forced to leave,
      For at home they could not stay,
  Because the Yankee army came
      And took everything away.
  
  They lament and moan most piteously,
      And say they will go back,
  And some of them are gone,
      And others on the track.
  
  They say they don't know how
      To do the work, and cry,
  And to live among the Yankees
      They would rather die.
  
  No doubt more than two millions
      Have gone to their long home,
  Since this wicked war began,
      Oh! When will it be done?