JOHN MORGAN AND HIS MEN.
Dedicated to Mrs. Basil Duke.
Wild disorder, uproar, panic,
Civil war with deeds Satanic
Break Kentucky’s dream—Neutrality—
Everywhere war’s stern reality
Drum and fife and bugle-playing—
Terrors breeding; fears allaying—
For various hopes and fears are rife
In the wild rage of civil strife;
When son and sire in contest stand,
Each loyal to his native land,
Obeying many-voiced command;
One loyal to the stripes and stars—
One faithful to the stars and bars!
There curls the smoke of burning train!
There leaguered stockades fight in vain—
War glows on hill and glen.
Fat cattle to the camp are led,
The farmer mourns his thoroughbred.
They quickly came, as quickly fled;
Swift as an Indian arrow sped—
The Southron’s joy, the Federal’s dread—
John Morgan and his men?
Loved and obeyed by his command,
With woman’s heart and lion’s hand—
The Sydney of the Southern land
John Harper’s thoroughbreds forsake
The turf of Woodford’s old cane-brake;
And walnut, oak and hackberry grove,
To track the bridle paths that rove
High o’er the caves of Edmonson—
The treeless fields without a sun!
And bear the bold Rough Riders on
Where trains are seized and treasures won.
Dark Echo River’s weeping wave
Shall mourn beneath the warrior’s grave,
The dauntless partisan who rode
Right on through storm and snow and flood.
The foe exclaims, “He’s here!” “He’s there!”
Vanished like spectres in the air,
Trackless, save for the empty stall,
Or smoke wreath rising like a pall
Over the commissary’s store,
Where hungry comrades loud deplore
The thunderbolt of Morgan’s raid—
Chief of th’ Invisible Brigade,
Vanished, like morning rainbow, spun
By golden distaff of the sun.
There is bustle and commotion to-night with “Ellen N,”
Fair Ellen, maid of iron stays, beloved of many men,
From a thousand fertile valleys, from many a teeming glen,
She bears great stores on laboring trains to Thomas and his men
The blue-coats down at Nashville have come to do or die,
To battle for the old flag beneath the Southern sky,
And to Ellen’s welcome ministry—they look most wistfully,
She bears souvenirs and messages in her capacious trains,
The maidens of the great Northwest send greetings to their swains,
She has hard-tack, and tobacco, and bacon in her store,
She has cod-fish and dried beef and gingerbread galore,
From Keystone, Empire State, from Indiana’s plains
Ellen speeds them all along in her wide flowing trains,
Bibles and tracts and song-books, and sweet messages from home,
And prayer-books from every church from Geneva to Rome,
From many a Western Valley, from many a quiet glen,
Comes goodly cheer from the kindly hands of buxom Ellen N.
There is trouble on your road to-night, O dauntless Ellen N!
There is panic, there is hurry—’tis John Morgan and his men,
There are bridges burned—the track’s ripped up—some one has cut the wire
And commissary stores go up by thousands in the fire,
A sudden charge at midnight, the long train is in ashes,
The magazine explodes with deafening roar and crashes,
Millions go up like tinder in all-consuming flame,
And Morgan and his men ride off, as quickly as they came.
Nashville and Chattanooga rue,
Divided rations cut in two.
The horseman scathless burned and fled
Their foes went supperless to bed.
They might as well have fought the air
They charged—but Morgan was not there.
His baffled foe, always too slow
To harass or inflict a blow,
Muttered, “For sure the man’s a wizard,
One might as well strike at a blizzard,”
He’s here—he’s gone again—he’s there!
Like exhalation of the air
Waving its strange, uncanny light
O’er grave or dismal swamp at night.
One trait his hottest foe confessed,
“A hero’s heart beats in his breast,
He never strikes a foe when down,
Nor woman ever saw him frown.”
The mean poltroon of later days
Who dons a mask in devious ways,
Black mask and heart, in liver white,
Fleet as a hare in coward flight
And worthy of the hangman’s loop
Ne’er found his like in Morgan’s troop.
They lashed no helpless foeman’s back,
No woman felt his brute attack.
He burned no roof o’er matron’s head,
While sleeping with her babes in bed,
Nor scourged with thorns till shoulders bled.
No town was burned in bandit flame
Till the poltroon Night-riders came,
With bloody threats in unsigned letters
And switches to alarm their betters;
An anarchist of basest soul,
The gallows-tree his fitting goal
Without a hope of reformation
He forces this dilemma on the nation,
Expatriation or Extermination.