Songs of the rebels: no Union men.
by Millie Mayfield.
“On the twenty-first, five of the enemy's steamers approached Washington, N. C., and landed a hundred Yankees who marched through the town playing ‘ Yankee Doodle,’ hoisted their flag on the Court-House, and destroyed gun-carriages and an unfinished gunboat in the ship-yard. The people preserved a sullen and unresisting silence. The Yankees then left saying they were disappointed in not finding Union men.” --Telegram from Charleston, March 29th, 1862. “Union men.” O thrice-fooled fools!As well might ye hope to bind
The desert sands with a silken thread
When tossed by the whirling wind;
Or to blend the shattered waves that lick
The feet of the cleaving rock,
When the tempest walks the face of the deep,
And the water-spirits mock;
As the severed chain to reunite
In a peaceful link again.
On our burning homesteads ye may write:
“We found no Union men.”
Ay, hoist your old dishonored flag,
And pipe your worn-out tune,
The hills of the South have caught the strain
And will answer it full soon;
Not with the scyophantic tone
And the cringing knee bent low-
The deep-mouthed cannon shall bear the tale
Where the sword deals blow for blow;
Our braying trumpets in your ears
Shall defiant shout again:
“Back, wolves and foxes, to your lairs,
Here are no Union men.”
Union, with tastes dissimilar?
Such Union is the worst
And direst form of bondage that
Nations or men has cursed!
Union with traitors? Hear ye not
That cry for vengeance deep,
Where hand to hand and foot to foot
Our glittering columns sweep?
Our iron-tongued artillery
Shouts through the bristling glen,
To the war-drum echoing reveille,
“Here are no Union men.”
Oh! deep have sunken the burning seeds
That the winged winds have borne,
That for all your future years must yield
The thistle and prison thorn.
Our soil was genial — ye might have sown
A harvest rich--'tis too late!
To our children's children we leave for you
But a heritage of hate!
Ye have opened the wild flood-gates of war
And we may not the torrent pen,
But ye seek in vain on our storm-beat shore
For the myth called “Union Men.”
