[
119]
119
chorus:--'Tis the song and sigh of the hungry,
”Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more!
Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O hard crackers, come again no more!“
There's a hungry, thirsty soldier
Who wears his life away,
With torn clothes, whose better days are o'er;
He is sighing now for whiskey,
And, with throat as dry as hay,
Sings, “Hard crackers, come again no more!” --chorus.
'Tis the song that is uttered
In camp by night and day,
'Tis the wail that is mingled with each snore,
'Tis the sighing of the soul
For spring chickens far away,
“O hard crackers, come again no more!” --chorus.
When
General Lyon heard the men singing these stanzas in their tents, he is said to have been moved by them to the extent of ordering the cook to serve up
corn-meal mush, for a change, when the song received the following alteration:--
But to groans and to murmurs
There has come a sudden hush,
Our frail forms are fainting at the door;
We are starving now on horse-feed
That the cooks call mush,
O hard crackers, come again once more!
chorus:--It is the dying wail of the starving,
Hard crackers, lard crackers, come again once more;
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o'er.
O hard crackers, come again once more!
The name hardtack seems not to have been in general use among the men in the
Western armies.
But I now pass to consider the other bread ration — the
loaf or
soft bread. Early in the war the ration of flour was served out to the men uncooked; but as the eighteen ounces
