December Eighteenth
... Nay, more! in death’s despite
The crippled skeleton “learned to write.”
“Dear mother,” at first, of course; and then
“Dear Captain,” inquiring about the men.
Captain’s answer: “Of eighty-and-five,
Giffen and I are left alive.”
Francis O. Ticknor
(“Little Giffen”)
Francis O. Ticknor dies, 1874
December Nineteenth
Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear—his first—as he bade good-bye,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
“I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.—He did not write.
Francis O. Ticknor
Crittenden’s compromise opposed by dominant party in Congress, 1860
Some of the manufacturing states think that a fight would be awful. Without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.
Z. Chandler
(Senator from Michigan)