Hallowe’en Prank Leads to Attempted Assault on Prophet

Image from Love Letters to the Library

Attempted on Mayor Prophet by One Jack O’Neil, Who Was Crazed From Drink.

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Had it Not Been for the Timely Arrival of Chief Watts Lima’s Chief Executive Would Have No Doubt Been Severely Handled — Trouble Precipitated Through the Arrest of O’Neil’s Son.

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The mayor’s court was the scene of much excitement yesterday, and for a short time it looked as if Lima’s chief executive would be viciously assaulted by a fellow who apparently is devoid of one iota of manhood. The fellow in question is one Jack O’Neil, a well known character among police officials.

Saturday night his son John, who, though young in years is already well known for his many depredations, was arrested for tearing up a board sidewalk. The incorrigible lad was celebrating Hallowe’en and, together with other boys, was engaged in destroying as much property as possible when an officer happened on the scene.

The other boys got away, but young O’Neill was caught and taken to police headquarters, where he was placed in jail being without necessary security. His trial was set for yesterday.

The father and mother were both present and the former was pretty well “organized” (drunk), which, it is said, is not unusual for him. It seems that his son was making $1 a day working somewhere in the city. This sum was, of course, given to his drunken father. In police court the father kept repeating that he would make Mayor Prophet pay $1 an hour during the time he held the boy as a prisoner. The mayor told him to cease, or he would find some means whereby he would keep quiet. This seemed to make the loquacious fellow very wrathy and he threatened His Hone with personal violence. Mayor Prophet only laughed at this, where-upon the angered husband and father started toward His Honor, who was seated in his occasional place. O’Neil’s eyes flashed with wild anger; his fists were clenched, and the mayor would, no doubt, have received summary treatment from the man crazed from excessive drink had it not been for the timely arrival of Chief Watts, who interfered by grabbing the fellow just as he was about to strike a vicious blow. The chief had heard angry voices from his office below and ran up stairs leading to the mayor’s office just in the nick of time as has been seen. O’Neill was soon subdued and he was soon after ejected.

The boy was fined $4.00. Probably because of the pleadings of the wife and mother, who seems to be a kindly woman, whose withered cheeks and furrowed brow tell far plainer than words of her suffering and misery the mayor allowed her husband to go without being fined.

O’Neill, it is said, is drunk almost constantly and abuses his son and wife in a manner not unlike a Barbarian. He has been in the criminal court numerous times, while his young son had been arrested upon several occasions for different offenses, one of which was robbing a postoffice.

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Nov 1, 1898

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Nov 3, 1898

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‘ROUND LIMA HOUR BY HOUR — WITH APOLOGIES
BY OH. OH. JACKENRIM
A Page from the Diary of an Antiquated Reporter — (TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO) —

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Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Dec 30, 1923

Brief Bio:

From:

Title: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association…., Volume 36
Authors: Ohio State Bar Association, Ohio State Bar Association. Meeting
Publisher    F.J. Heer, 1915
Pgs 138-139 (google book link)

Title: The history of Fuller’s Ohio brigade, 1861-1865: its great march, with roster, portraits, battle maps and biographies
Author: Charles H. Smith
Publisher    Press of A. J. Watt, 1909
pgs 341-343

The Clank of Breaking Manacles

Ogden Standard Examiner (Ogden, Utah) Sep 12, 1928

When you read republican platforms you see the faces of Lincoln and Grant, you hear the emancipation proclamation, the clank of breaking manacles falling from the limbs of slaves, the battle hymns of the republic, and the glory of the stars and stripes.

When you read the democratic platforms you see the faces of James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, and Grover Cleveland; you hear of secession and rebellion, panic and disaster, repudiation of national obligations, starvation of American labor, and the hauling down of the American flag.

Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) Sep 23, 1902

…Mr. STEVENS desired to say….As the Constitution could not be executed in the seceded States, the war must be carried as against an independent nation. The people would admit the measures he had advocated from the onset. To arm negro slaves was the only way on earth to exterminate the rebellion, they would find. We must treat those States as now outside of the Union, as conquered provinces, settle them with new men, and drive the rebels as exiles from the continent. They had the pluck and endurance which were not at first realised on this side of the House. They had determination and endurance, and nothing but exile, extermination or starvation could make them submit.

Mr. STEVENS here caused an article to be read, a special dispatch to the Chicago Times, to the effect that Gov. ROBINSON, of Kentucky, had issued a che???r letter to the members of the Legislature, asking for their views on the President’s Proclamation, and that fully two-thirds were in favor of taking the State out of the Union if the Proclamation is enforced. That the State militia would go with the South, and that HUMPHREY MARSHALL ad stationed himself at Mount Sterling to receive them.

Mr. MALLORY wished to know what part of this ominum gatherum the gentleman wished to direct their attention.

Mr. STEVENS — That two-thirds of the Legislature are in favor of taking the State out of the Union.

Mr. MALLORY denounced this newspaper statement as utterly false. That Gov. ROBINSON will do anything like advising Kentucky to engage in the rebellion, or arm against the Government, is equally false. There was no ground for such assertion.

Mr. STEVENS — I am happy to hear it, as the statement came from a Democratic newspaper, and I doubted its truth very much. [Laughter.]

Mr. WADSWORTH noticed another branch of the article, namely, about HUMPHREY MARSHALL being at Mount Sterling. The last he heard of HUMPHREY was, he was 170 miles off. He was drunk and cursing Kentucky, because she would not rise like “My Maryland.” The muskets in Kentucky are in the hands of the militia. employed in the defence of the Union. The malignant correspondent of the Chicago Times had not the slightest foundation for saying that the guns would ever be turned against the Union.

In reply to a question by Mr. STEVENS, whether the proclamation would take Kentucky out of the Union, he said Kentucky cannot be taken out of the Union either by secessionists or by abolitionists or both combined. (Applause and cried of “good.”) As for the emancipation proclamation, we despise and laugh at it. The latest mustering of Gen. BRAGG shows only 2,300 Kentuckians in his army, and some 1,200 Kentuckians had deserted from HUMPHREY MARSHALL. His opinion was there are not five thousand persons who were once citizens of Kentucky, who are in the rebel army, but the course pursued by the Radicals, like the gentleman from Pennsylvania, has worked more mischief to the Union than all the rebels have done since July, 1861. France and England might join the United States, but if the negroes are set free under the Proclamation, the Secessionists never can be conquered. The Proclamation cannot be enforced in Kentucky — not one man in ten thousand is in favor it….

The New York Times (New York, New York) Jan 9, 1863

New York Times (New York, New York) Jan 9, 1863

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[From the N.Y. Daily News]
THE PEACE CONFERENCE
[excerpt]

Mr. Lincoln offered no terms of compromise, and rejected, in advance, every proposition that did not accord with the extreme views of the faction he represents. He demanded unconditional submission to the Federal authority, and compliance with all the schemes of abolition set forth in the emancipation proclamation and the proposed amendment of the Constitution.

In brief, he gave the Southern people to understand that reconciliation was out of the question, unless they acquiesced in measures most repugnant to their feelings, and most antagonistical to their political convictions.

Galveston Daily News (Galvestion, Texas) Mar 4, 1865

The Chronicle Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) Sep 22, 1924

The Loss of the Sultana – A War Ballad

Image from Missed My Stop

IN MEMORIAM.

By Will M. Carleton.
(TELEGRAM)

“MEMPHIS, TENN., April 23d, 1865. — The steamer Sultana, from New Orleans the 21st, took on board at Vicksburg, upward of 1,900 Federal soldiers, principally parolled prisoners from Cahawba and Andersonville. — When seven miles above this city, her boiler exploded and she burned to the water’s edge. Of all on board, not more than six hundred were saved.”

I.
Down at Vicksburg, grim and smoking, on a cloudy April’s day,
Her gaudy colors flying fast, the old Sultana lay,
Waiting for the welcome signal that should order her away.

On her decks, all bright and smiling, stood a band of haggard men,
Who had smarted, prayed, and fasted, in a rebel prison-pen;
Who had faced the imps and goblins of a Southern devils’ den.

There were nineteen hundred heroes, who a prisoner’s trials knew;
From the fiery Southern furnace, nineteen hundred tried and true,
Who had doffed their faded tatters, for the legendary blue.

Pale and wasted were their features; pinched with want and prison fare;
Trampled by the hoofs of hatred, wrinkled by the hand of care;
Seamed and scarred with ruthless clawings from the tatoos of Despair.

But they waved their hands and shouted, as they g?ded from the shore,
And they cried, “Thank God’s great mercy, we are bound for home once more!”
And such lusty cheers of gladness never rent the air before!

But when last the Mississippi drank the echoes of their cry,
From the West, a roll of thunder sent an ominous reply,
And the wind swept down the river, with a sad foreboding sigh,

But they heeded not the omen; and the merry laugh went round;
In the brightness of the future all the fearful past was drowned;
And among the nineteen hundred ran the glad cry “homeward bound.”

II.
There was one among that number, whom the past to me endears;
True as steel and firm as marble was that lad of sixteen years,
With a soul of highest honor, and a heart devoid of fears.

With a mind all clear and active, and with powers that mind to wield,
With a faith that could not falter, and a will it would not yield,
He buckled on his armor, and went forth into the field.

And at last, with hapless comrades, he the breath of prison drew,
And the pains of want and famine with the rest of them he knew;
But he clenched his teeth and muttered, “I mean to see it through!”

And he wrote unto his mother, when he lay in sickness low,
“IF they ask you ‘Is he sorry that he made his mind to go?
Does he wish he might recall it?’ Mother, proudly tell them No!”

And to-day he stood in calmness mid that fated steamer’s crew,
And he uttered words of gladness, which, alas! were but too true,
As between his teeth he muttered, “I have almost seen it thro’!”

And he thought him of a father, who for once would be unmanned,
As he welcomed him in language he could hardly understand,
But repaid the lack of speaking in the pressure of his hand.

And he thought him of a mother, with a kind and gentle face,
Who would kiss him as she used to, with a warm and close embrace,
Who would love him with affection that no absence could erase.

Of a manly little brother, who would climb upon his knee,
Who would throw his arms around him, in his glad and boyish glee,
And would think that of all soldiers there was none so brave as he.

And he thought him of a maiden, whom at twilight a hour he’d seek,
Who would meet him at the threshold, with a blush upon her cheek,
And from out her eyes would tell him all the love she would not speak.

And he stood, and all these blessings in his gladdened mind he weighed,
And within the golden future, many a glorious plan he laid;
And he murmured, “I am happy; all my sufferings are repaid.”

III.
O, my God! that dull explosion! not a warning, not a prayer,
Ere it hurls full many a victim in the black and smoking air,
With a river for a death bed, and a moment to prepare!

With that hissing, steaming boiler, shatters many a hope that’s dear!
And a thousand shrieks and curses throw their echoes far and near,
With a thousand prayers for succor, that can reach no pitying ear.

And that youth whose cup of gladness danced so lately to the brim,
May the God of love and mercy hold a helping hand to him,
As he falls into the water, with a broken arm and limb!

But he rises to the surface, with  a look of pain and dread,
With a face all white as marble, like the faces of the dead,
And the crimson blood fast flowing from a death-wound on his head.

But a flash of manly courage fires his sinking heart anew,
And he grasps a floating timber, with the arm that still is true,
And between his teeth he mutters, “I mean to see it though.”

And he clung unto the fragment for a painful hour or more,
Vainly striving in his weakness, for the distant, gloomy shore.
For that heart of truest courage would not let the boy give o’er.

For a mortal hour he battled with the restless, flowing tide,
But the darkness gathered round him, and he stream was cold and wide,
And his pale lips murmuring, “Mother,” he relaxed his hold and died.

And with but the flowing waters to repeat his funeral lay,
Neath the turbid Mississippi lies the martyred boy to day,
His noble frame all mangled, and fast going to decay.

But if ever God reached downward, for a soul without alloy,
And if ever God had mercy on a dying soldier boy,
Rests to-day that youthful hero, in a home of peace and joy.

The Hillsdale Standard (Hillsdale, Michigan) Jan 5, 1869

Image from Civil War Family

A later, revised version of the poem ran in the Roman Citizen (Rome, New York) on June 11, 1886:

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Antietam: ‘By heaven! it was a goodly sight to see – For one who had no friend or brother there.’

Image from: (Google book link)

Title: The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape
Author: Albert Deane Richardson
Publisher    American Pub. Co., 1865

Incidents of Antietam.

We take the following incidents of the battle of Antietam from “The Field, The Dungeon and the Escape,” by A.D. Richardson.

My confrere and myself were within a few yards of Gen. Hooker. It was a very hot place. We could not distinguish the ‘ping’ of the individual bullets, but their combined and mingled hum was like the din of a great Lowell factory. Solid shot and shell came shrieking through the air, but over our heads, as we were on the extreme front.

Hooker – common-place before — the moment he heard the guns, loomed up into gigantic stature. His eye gleamed with the grand anger of battle. He seemed to know exactly what to do, to feel that he was master of the situation, and to impress every one else with the fact. Turning to one of his staff, and pointing to a spot near us, he said:

“Go and tell Capt. ____ to bring his battery and plant it there, at once.”

The lieutenant rode away. After giving one or two further orders with great clearness rapidity and precision, Hooker’s eye again turned to that mass of rebel infantry in the woods, and he said to another officer with great emphasis:

“Go and tell Capt. ____ to bring his battery here instantly!”

Sending more messages to the various divisions and batteries, only a single member of the staff remained.

Once more scanning the woods with his eagle eye, Hooker directed the aid:

“Go, and tell Capt. ____ to bring the batter y without one second’s delay. Why, my God, how he can pour it into their infantry.”

By this time seven of the body-guard had fallen from their saddles. Our horses plunged wildly. A shell plowed the ground under my rearing steed, and another exploded near Mr. Smalley, throwing great clouds of dust over both of us. Hooker leaped his white horse over a low fence into an adjacent orchard, whither we gladly followed. Though we did not move more than thirty yards, it took us comparatively out of range.

The desired battery, stimulated by three successive messages, came up with smoking horses, at a full run, was unlimbered in the twinkling of an eye, and began to pour shots into the enemy, who were also suffering severely from our infantry charges. IT was not many seconds before they began to waver. — Through the rifting smoke we could see their line sway to and fro; then it broke like a thaw in a great river. Hooker rose up in his saddle, and, in a voice of suppressed thunder, exclaimed:

“There they go, . . . . . . . Forward!”

Our whole line moved on. It was now nearly dark. Having shared the experience of ‘Fighting Joe Hooker’ quite long enough, I turned toward the rear. Fresh troops were pressing forward, and stragglers were ranged in long lines behind rocks and trees.

Riding slowly along a grassy slope, as I supposed quite out of range, my meditations were disturbed by a cannon ball, whose rush of air fanned my face, and made my horse shrink and read almost upright. The next moment came another behind me, and by the great blaze of a fire of rails, which the soldiers had built, I saw it ricochet down the slope like a foot ball, and pass right through a column of our troops in blue who were marched steadily forward. The gap which it made was immediately closed up.

Men with litters were grouping through the darkness, bearing the wounded to the ambulances.

At nine o’clock I wandered to a farm-house, occupied by some of our pickets. We dared not light candles as it was within range of the enemy. The family had left. I tied my horse to an apple tree and lay down upon the parlor floor, with my saddle for a pillow. At intervals during the night we heard the popping of musketry, and at the first glimpse of dawn the picket officer shook me by the arm.

“My friend,” said he, “you had better go away as soon as you can; this place is getting rather hot for civilians.”

I rode around through the field, for shot and shell were already screaming up the narrow lane.

Thus commenced the long, hotly-contested battle of Antietam. Our line was three miles in length, with Hooker on the right, Burnside on the left, and a great gap in the centre, occupied only by artillery; while Fitz John Porter with the fine corps was held in reserve. From dawn until nearly dark the two great armies wrestled like athletes, straining every muscle, losing here, gaining there, and at many points fighting the same ground over and over again. It was a fierce, sturdy, indecisive conflict.

Five thousand spectators viewed the struggle from a hill comparatively out of range. — Not more than three persons were struck there during the day, McClellan and his staff occupied another ridge half a mile in the rear.

‘By heaven! it was a goodly sight to see
For one who had no friend or brother there.’

No one who looked upon that wonderful panorama can describe or forget it. Every hill and valley, every corn field, grove and cluster of trees was fiercely fought for.

The artillery was unceasing; we could often count more than sixty guns to the minute. It was like the patter of rain drops in an April shower. On the great field were riderless horses and scattering men, clouds of dirt from solid shot and expending shells, long, dark, lines of infantry swaying to and fro, with columns of smoke rising from their muskets, red flashes and white puffs from the batteries — with the sun shining brightly on all this scene of tumult, and beyond it, upon the dark, rich woods, and the clear, blue mountains south of the Potomac.”

The Herald and Torch Light (Hagerstown, Maryland) Aug 16, 1865

Seventy five years ago Corp. Basil Lemley, left, 94, fought with the Union army, and Capt. Robert E. Miles, center, 98 was on the side of the Confederacy in the bloody Civil war battle of Antietam. The two ex-soldiers put aside their one-time enmity and sealed their friendship with a handshake above, with President Roosevelt, right, when he visited the battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland on Constitution day.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Sep 18, 1937

Image from Mr Lincoln & Friends – Ozias M. Hatch

After the battle of Antietam, when McClellan’s army lay unaccountably idle, Lincoln, with his friend, O.M. Hatch of Illinois, went to the front. They stood on a hill from which they could view the vast camp, and Lincoln said:

Lincoln — Hatch, Hatch, what is all this?

Hatch — Why, that is the Army of the Potomac.

Lincoln — No, Hatch, no. That is General McClellan’s bodyguard.

The Bee (Danville, Virginia) Jul 31, 1952

Ralph Waldo Emerson – Sentiments and Philosophy

 

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

Ralph Waldo Emerson makes almost as much from his apple orchard as he does from his books.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Sep 20, 1876

 

Anniston Star (Anniston, Alabama) Apr 2, 1935

 

Daily Messenger (Canandaiqua, New York) Jan 18, 1960

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

The Philosopher at a Tavern — A Bar-Keeper’s Estimate of the Right Drink for Him.

Henry Wilson used to tell a good story about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s attempt to “live like other folks.”
Stopping while this fit was on him at a country tavern where he was to lecture, instead of retiring to meditate and freeze in his own cold and cheerless room, he manfully sat in the barroom like the rest of mankind.

He endured the tobacco smoke as well as he could, and watched, no doubt with a curiosity as lively as M. du Chariliu’s on his first visit to a cannibal fest among the Fans, the actions of the men who “sat around.” He saw one after another walk up to the bar and demand and swallow a glass of whiskey; and, true to his determination to be for once like other men, the great philosopher — so the tale goes on — at last rose, and no doubt with a certain degree of diffidence, but no doubt also with a sufficiency of courage in his port and countenance, advanced to the bar, and in a voice modulated as nearly as he could after those he had just heard, demanded a “whiskey skin.”

The barkeeper, a man of high principle, looked into the philosopher’s face for a moment and then said: “You do not want whiskey, you want ginger-pop;” and accordingly administered that mild and harmless stimulant.

Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, Nevada) Jun 22, 1888

 

Times Record (Troy, New York) Apr 10, 1957

 

Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Apr 29, 1901

Sentiments in 1863.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball
A field of havoc and war,
Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor?
I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great;
Fishers and choppers and plowmen
Shall constituted a state.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jun 7, 1915

 

The philosophy of the man in the street is “get it and hold it,” in the belief of Benjamin de Casseres, poet and ironic philosopher, who says that after all this may be the most workable system for those to whom abstract theories are no more than the “Einstein theory to a gnat on a derby.” The article is one of a series on “what’s going on in the world today.”

By BENJAMINE DE CASSERES.
(Copyright 1931, by the Associated Press.)

NEW YORK, July 3. (AP) — Philosophy — which is, literally, the love of wisdom but which is in reality the art or science of explaining the how and why of things — has never had much of a vogue in America. Today less so than ever for the American  cares very little about the how and why of things. His one question is: Will it work out?

He doesn’t philosophize on the current depression of his jobless condition or the contraction in stock values. He is not concerned, if he is a wet, how prohibition came on us. Nor will he take any steps, either personally or thru his legislative representatives, to prevent future moves of a like nature. He philosophizes thus: Here it is. Let’s dodge it if we can’t get out of it.

Philosophy In Way.

This attitude is, I suppose, a philosophy in a way — a lazy, do-nothing, good natured philosophy founded on the ineradicable and inherent optimism of the expansive soul who calls the state in which he happens to be born “God’s own country” and who believes “everything always comes out right in the end.”

That’s the philosophy, anyhow, of the man in the street. Of abstract thot he has not a glimmer. Theories of the universe, psychological problems and philosophical aphorisms and rules are no more to him than the Einstein theory to a gnat on a derby. His “wisdom” is “get it and hold it.” And I’m not sure that it isn’t the profoundest, the only and most workable system of philosophy so long as the world is peopled by practical, down-to-the-ground beings.

Boast Two Men.

In the regions of pure philosophical thot we boast of two men who have profoundly affected thot in Europe — Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James and one political philosopher whose influence has been universal, Thomas Jefferson.

Emerson and Jefferson, both advocates of extreme and aggressive individualism, and, theoretically at least, idealist — anarchists, are as dead in the country of their birth, so far as the public go, as prohibition in Hoboken. We move toward the standardization and destruction of all individual rights into pure capitalistic bolshevism, in which moloch-state becomes the absorber and keeper of all personal values.

Fits America.

William James, who gave us the philosophy of pragmatism — or what have you? — comes nearer to the ideal American philosopher, fits more neatly into the American character, than either Emerson or Jefferson.

Pragmatism is really a great and universal individual philosophy which makes the workableness — or “cash-down value,” as James calls it — of a thing the criterion of its truthfulness. He is, in a manner, the enemy of abstract thot. His antithesis is Remy de Gourmont, who said, “thots are to be thot, not acted.”

Does Not Exist.

Philosophy in the grand sense in American does not exist today. There is no love of thot for the pure gymnastic of cerebration. No one cares a hen’s molar about why anything happened or whether it will happen again.

All I can see ahead in America is Karl Marx, who was neither a philosopher nor a thinker, but a sensational utopist with a diabolical scheme for extinguishing the individual.

After all, what is wisdom? I think it is just to stand aside and watch the show. I, who am a philosopher, get a great kick out of it.

Mason City Globe Gazette (Mason City, Iowa) Jul 3, 1931

Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) Aug 24, 1901

 

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jun 8, 1915

 

Daily Mail (Hagerstown, Maryland) Sep 27, 1932

Greeley Daily Tribune (Greeley, Colorado) Feb 18, 1920

The Emerson quote below was used at the bottom of several Lucky Strike advertisements, including the one above.

Star-News (Pasadena, California) Jan 3, 1957

Oh! Abraham, Resign

Image from Son of the South

From the Philadelphia Inquirer.

OH! ABRAHAM, RESIGN.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

The days are growing shorter,
The sun has crossed the line,
And the people are asking,
“Will Abraham resign?”
Poor old Father Abraham,
Once a people’s pride;
Your glory has deserted,
We’re prepared to let you “slide.”

You’ve forgotten all the promises
Made in those speeches fine,
When traveling to the capital,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

You’ve kill the Constitution,
Framed by patriots “lang syne;”
You’ve gagged the mouths of freemen,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

Between states once fraternal,
You’ve drawn your party line;
You’ve brought us war infernal,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

You’ve imprisoned honest freemen,
And in dungeons let them pine
For home, and wife, and children,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

You’ve leagued with John Brown, Forney,
To Greeley you incline,
You’re hand and glove with Sumner,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

The people will not swallow
That wicked scheme of thine,
To ‘mancipate the “woolly heads,”
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

Pennsylvania has condemned you,
Ohio’s in the line;
And the Hoosier boys are shouting,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

The Empire State has spoken
Against thee, Abr’ mine;
The Jersey Bines are after thee,
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

Against these solemn warnings,
Steel not that heart of thine;
Far “better late than never,”
Oh! Abraham, resign!
Poor old Father Abraham.

Allen County Democrat (Lima, Ohio) Dec 10, 1862

Not Yet! The Spirit of Liberty Still Survives

Image from RightWingStuff

ADDRESS

DELIVERED ON JULY 4, 1863, AT PADUCAH, KY., TO THE CITIZENS, AND THE 111TH REG. ILL. VOL.

BY JAMES BASSETT, ESQ.
[excerpt]

Fellow citizens! God intended us as one consolidated and great people, our physical geography so teaches. Whence our seaboard along the Atlantic, the Mexican Gulf and the Pacific, whence our lakes; whence our arterial rivers and our boundless plains, but to teach the lesson, that from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and from the sunny Mexican Gulf to frigid Canada, we are to be one people, having a grand mission of liberty, which is the exponent of Christianity, the only great idea of liberty to man promulgated by God.

Are you prepared to give up that great mission — to resign nationality — to serve under aristocratic or kingly rule, under the iron sceptre of despotism — to cease to be freemen — to give up the memory of the past — and instead of being citizens of the great nation of the United States, become, it may be, members of some small confederacy, as one has said become citizens not of the United States, whose flag is respected in every land, but become citizens of what? of a small American nation, whose flag, the Palmetto, or some other ensign, steals into the harbour of some ancient nationality, and when asked about, the answer be, it is the flag of one of the obscure republics of America. Are you prepared I ask to blot out the past, despise the future? I rather think you will adopt the sentiment of the Representative poet of American W.C. Bryant, and say “Not Yet”

“Oh! country, marvel of the earth,
Oh realm to sudden greatness grown,
The age that gloried in thy birth,
Shall it behold thee overthrown?
Shall traitors lay that greatness low?
No, Land of Hope and blessing, No!

And we who wear thy glorious name
Shall we, like cravens, stand apart,
When those whom thou hast trusted, aim
The death-blow at thy generous heart?
Forth goes the battle cry, and lo
Hosts rise in harness, shouting No!

And they who founded, in our land
The power that rules from sea to sea,
Bled they in vain, or vainly planned
To leave their country great and free!
Their sleeping ashes, from below,
Send up the thrilling murmur, No!

Knit they the gentle ties which long
These sister States were proud to wear,
And forged the kindly links so strong
For idle hands in sport to tear,
For scornful hands aside to throw?
No, by our fathers’ memory, No!

Our humming marts, our iron ways,
Our wind tossed woods on mountain crest,
The hoarse Atlantic, with its bays,
The calm, broad Ocean of the West,
And Mississippi’s torrent flow,
And loud Niagara, answer, No!

For now behold, the arm that gave
The victory in our fathers’ day,
Strong, as of old, to guard and save,
That mighty arm, which none can stay–
On clouds above, and fields below,
Writes in men’s sight, the answer, No!”

How glorious is Liberty! It is a perennial flower, ever blooming, ever fresh. Let the conqueror, the tyrant wrap the world in flames, so that the blood of millions can not quench them, the Spirit of Liberty still survives, and grows stronger and stronger, while the oppression dwindles and dies. And the tree of American liberty planted by Washington, and nurtured by the blood of the patriots in 1776, whose branches have so spread as to encircle this whole continent, and towered so high as to be seen by all the nations, shall spread wider, and rise higher and higher; so that the Eagle of Liberty perched on its topmost bough shall glory in freedom, and the desponding of every nation find shelter under its kindly branches. That tree which is like the tree in the amaranthine bowers of Paradise whose leaves are for the healing of the nations; shall never be uprooted from the soil of free America, of these United States.

Centralia Sentinel (Centralia, Illinois) Jul 26, 1863

We Can’t Surrender Now!

WE CAN’T SURRENDER NOW.

The struggle was too fierce and long,
The cost in lives too dear —
Not yet forgotten are the braves
Who had no thought of fear;
They could not see the old flag torn,
From Freedom’s hallowed brow,
Nor can we lose what they bequeathed —
We can’t surrender now!

While Hope is strong within the breast
Of every freeman true —
While Union’s symbol proudly floats
Its red and white and blue —
While God is just, and Might o’er Right
No victory will allow,
We will be true to Liberty —
We can’t surrender now!

Then ask us not to vote for those
Who held our brave boys back,
When onward came the Union foes
With desolating track;
We cannot blot the record fair
Of Freedom’s holy vow,
We cannot dim Truth’s sacred light —
We can’t surrender now!

The Grand Traverse Herald (Traverse City, Michigan) Oct 29, 1868

Touch Not That Flag

Image from Son of the South

TOUCH NOT THAT FLAG.

Traitor spare that flag!
Touch not a single star!
Its sheltering glory now
Still blazes near and far;
‘Twas our forefathers’ hand
That placed it o’er our head,
And thou shalt let it stand,
Or perish with the dead.

That dear old precious flag,
Whose glory and renown
Are spread o’er land and sea,
And would’st then tear it down?
Traitor! forbear thy touch!
Rend not its heart-bound ties!
Oh, spare that glorious flag,
Still streaming in the skies.

When I was yet a boy,
I gloried in the sight,
And raised my voice in joy
To greet its folds of light —
For it my home is dear;
Dear is my native land;
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that flag stand!

My heart-strings round thee cling
Close as the stripe, old friend;
Thy praises men shall sing,
Till time itself shall end.
Old flag, the storm still brave,
And, Traitor, leave the spot!
While I’ve a hand to save,
Thy touch shall harm it not!

Allen County Democrat (Lima, Ohio) Jan 28, 1863

The Heart’s Idol – A Civil War Memory

THE HEART’S IDOL.

BY RENA L.L.  .

[To Mrs. Ida Mathers, my friend and companion, around the cots of our country’s wounded and dying.]

She came, a quiet messenger
To those who needed care;
A gentle friend, a faithful nurse.
Like some saddened spirit
She would come and go
So noiselessly that echoes dared not haunt her footsteps.
Those dark eyes, so large and sad,
Like summer seas, pure, fathomless and deep,
Told her sad history.

In the heat of battle he was stricken down;
Brave, strong and true, his men
Where  fiercest raged the conflict;
Nor left them when the serried ranks
Poured forth from mutilated forms,
And formed in line of march
For lands immortal.
“For Liberty and God,” he cried,
As, through the battle smoke and dust,
He caught the glimmer of the flag.
Now rising, falling, but at last upright
Is planted firmly; the field is won —
I’m ready now, my men! One message home
And I’ll be with you —

“Dear wife, I’m dying! Oh, my best beloved,
My precious Ida, we have loved too well!
Kiss Maud for me our only darling
Meet me in Heaven — dear one, farewell!”
What wonder that the tears would start
With ever gush of music, every voice of mirth?
What wonder that she moved so still,
Tenderly and gently as a sister might
Among the wounded sufferers?
Her heart was sore, she too had suffered;
Her idol slept and earth had lost its light.

The Hillsdale Standard (Hillsdale, Michigan) May 29, 1866

1860 Census – Gilcad, Branch Co., Michigan: Ida, her husband, Zelotes and daughter Maud are living with his parents.

Zelotes fought for the Union (he was a sergeant,) was wounded and died.

This book states Zelotes died from disease.