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46 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
character, and from the fact that it was among the earliest in the war. The elegies upon his death were numerous, as well as those in praise of the regiment itself. One of the latter, by Archibald Scott, whose name, contrary to the usual custom, was prefixed to the ballad, had a good deal of rude vigor, of which the following is a specimen: —
Shall ugly plugs of Baltimore, Who come out with stones and staves, Get leave our patriots' blood to pour, And drive our soldiers from their shore ? No, no ! by Hell, in flames shall roar Their city first by York Zouaves !
Another phase of life in the cities, from that of the enthusiasm of the young men in marching to the war and the fervent appeals for enlistment, was that of the feelings of the women whose sons and husbands left their workshops to join the army. The grief was as bitter and the patriotism as sincere among the inmates of the crowded tenement houses and the narrow and barren homes of the families of the workingmen of New York as among their sisters in the farmhouses in the country, whose surroundings better lent themselves to the illumination of poetry, and it cost as much to put down the tin pail of the city laborer as for the farmer to
Lay down the axe, fling by the spade, |
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