An undated typscript from The Clay M. Greene Collection, (1850-1933), Santa
Clara University. The original
PDF of the scanned page.
Retrieved 2023-06-03 from
https://cdm17268.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17268coll7/id/242/rec/3
To provide Saltpetre for manufacture of Gunpowder, the
Confederates had to resort to all sorts of devices, such as digging
out and leaching the earth from old smoke-houses, barns and caves
and making artificial beds of all sorts of nitrogenous refuse,--
having agents for the purpose in every town and city.
The agent at Selma, Alabama, was particularly energetic
and enthusiastic in his work, and put the following advertisement
in the Selma paper.
"The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested
to preserve the chamber lye collected about their premises for the
purpose of making nitre.
A barrel will be sent around daily to collect it.
John Harralson,
Agent Nitre and Mining Bureau."
This attracted the attention of one of the army poets
and the first of the two effusions given below resulted.
It was copied and privately circulated all over the Con-
federacy and finally crossing the lines, an unknown Federal poet
added the Yankee's view of it.
AN APPEAL TO JOHN HARRALSON.
John Harralson! John Harralson! You are a wretched creature,
You've added to the bloody war a new and awful feature.
You'd have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The ladies, bless the pretty dears, should save their p- for nitre.
John Harralson! John Harralson! where did you get the notion
To send your barrel round the touwn, to gather up the lotion?
We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts or kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic p-------.
John Harralson! John Harralson, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpetre;
For tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her shift she's killing off a Yankee.
THE YANKEE'S VIEW OF IT.
John Harralson! John Harrolson! We've read in song and story
How Woman's tears, thro' all the years, have moistened fields of glory.
But never was it told before, how, mid such scenes of slaughter,
Your sothern beauties dried their tears and went to making water.
No wonder that your boys were brave! Who couldn't be a fighter,
If every time he shot his gun he used his sweethearts nitre.
And, vice-versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder,
Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman's bladder.
They say there was a subtle smell that lingered in that powder,
And as the smoke grew thicker and the din of battle louder,
That there was found to this compound one serious objection,
No solder could sniff it without having an erection.