Into your confounded quarrel!
Let myself be dragged I'll not
By you, fighting for a Merrill
Tariff; or your slavery lot.
What I want to do with either
Is impartially to trade:
Nonsense I will stand from neither
Past the bounds of gasconade.
You North, roaring, raving, yelling,
Hold your jaw, you booby, do;
What, d'ye threaten me for selling
Arms to South, as well as you?
South, at me don't bawl and bellow,
That won't make me take your part;
So you just be off, young fellow:
Now, you noisy chap, too, start!
To be called names 'tis unpleasant;
Words, however, break no bones:
I control myself at present;
But beware of throwing stones!
I won't have my windows broken,
Mind, you brawlers, what I say,
See this stick, a striking token;
Cut your own, or civil stay.
In a succeeding cartoon Punch called for a separation between the fighters, for now, said he, "dis-union is strength." Another cartoon hails the fraternization—reported to have taken place between negroes bearing the flags of the rival armies—with the epigram "When black meets black then comes the end of war."
Henry Ward Beecher's visit to England, in the autumn of 1863, is celebrated by a cartoon and by a poem in which due praise is given to the vigor of his oratory and to the excellence of his intentions.
BRITISHER TO BEECHER
Alas! what a pity it is, Parson Beecher,
That you came not at once when Secession broke out,
As Abraham Lincoln's Apostle, a preacher
Of the Union; a gospel which Englishmen doubt;
For that Union, you see,
Was a limb of our tree:
Its own branches to break themselves off are as free.
Still, Beecher, if you had been only sent hither,
When at first the Palmetto flag flouted the sky,
Commissioned foul slavery's faction to wither,
And this nation invoke to be Freedom's ally,
With your eloquent art
You had won England's heart;
We were fully disposed towards taking your part.
Instead of a Reverend Beecher, appealing
To our conscience, in Liberty's name, for the right,
We heard a cool scoundrel advise in the stealing
Of Britannia's domains, North and South to unite;
And your papers were full
Of abuse of John Bull;
Whilst he bore the blockade which withheld cotton wool.
Malevolence, taking our ill-will for granted,
Has reviled us, pursued us with bluster and threat,
Supposing itself the remembrance had planted
In our bosom of wrongs which we couldn't forget,
And should take, in its case
Of misfortune, as base
A revenge as itself would have ta'en in our place.