For the walls of Vicksburg yielded to the Union shot and shell,
While Port Hudson, trembling, waited but a clearer tale to tell.
But, alas! day’s golden image scarce had left its impress there,
When above a Northern city rose the sounds of wild despair:
Fiends and demons yet unnumbered rallied forth in bold array;
Deeds of darkness, scenes of carnage, marked the traitors’ onward way.
Blind to feeling, deaf to mercy, who may judge the depth of crime?
None but God may know the misery traced upon the Book of Time.
The following account of the mob is from “The New-York Times” July 14, 1863:—
“The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob about four o’clock. This institution is situated on Fifth Avenue; and the building, with the grounds and gardens adjoining, extends from Forty-third to Forty-fourth Street. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of the rioters, the majority of whom were women and children, entered the premises, and, in the most excited and violent manner, ransacked and plundered the building from cellar to garret. The building was located in the most healthy portion of the city. It was purely a charitable institution. In it there was an average of six or eight hundred homeless colored orphans. The building was a large four-story one, with two wings of three stories each.