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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  Written from the account of my son, Washington, after his return from visiting 
  his sons in the army in 1863.
  
  On the river down below,
      At a city called Natchez,
  Thousands of the Negroes there
      Have assembled for their ease.
  
  The confiscation proclamation
      There seems working well,
  From forty full to sixty
      Daily freed from that corral.
  
  They are daily freed and sent
      To the land of Kingdom Come,
  Twenty-eight put in one grave,
      And gone to their long home.
  
  When dead, the dead and living
      Lay in one bed together,
  No animals do so,
      But swine in coldest weather.
  
  For three or four days,
      Till they decompose and rot,
  For fear they'll have to bury them
      Report it, they will not.
  
  Sometimes so badly putrid
      They can't be moved at all,
  Then the shanty, down must come,
      Burn Negroes, house and all.
  
  They must be compelled to bury them,
      They are such a lazy crew,
  At the bayonet's point the whites
      Must compel them what to do.
  
  Then they take the shortest cut,
      Pile dozens in a heap,
  Without a straw or cornstalk,
      Earth from their skins to keep.
  
  Our Government is feeding them
      Five days' rations at a time,
  And when they get their rations,
      Gluttony to them is no crime.
  
  They eat and eat and eat,
      The more part at the first meal,
  Soon after they quit eating,
      Much worse for it they feel.
  
  A disease like cholera morbus
      In its worst form sets in,
  Nor many hours after
      Death closes up the scene.
  
  Then thousand little vermin,
      Surprising strange to tell,
  All crawling on the ground,
      That off of them fell.
  
  Filth, disease and pestilence,
      Small pox and measles, too,
  Are freeing of the Negroes
      As fast as they can go.