min’
This ain’t the fittest time to go it blin’,
Nor these ain’t metters thet with pol’tics swings,
But goes ‘way down amongst the roots o’ things; 210
Coz Sumner talked o’ whitewashin’ one day
They wun’t let four years’ war be throwed away. 
‘Let the South hev her rights?’ They say, ’Thet’s you! 
But nut greb hold of other folks’s tu.’ 
Who owns this country, is it they or Andy? 
Leastways it ough’ to be the People and he;
Let him be senior pardner, ef he’s so,
But let them kin’ o’ smuggle in ez Co; [Laughter.]
Did he diskiver it?  Consid’ble numbers
Think thet the job wuz taken by Columbus. 220
Did he set tu an’ make it wut it is? 
Ef so, I guess the One-Man-power hez riz. 
Did he put thru the rebbles, clear the docket,
An’ pay th’ expenses out of his own pocket? 
Ef thet’s the case, then everythin’ I exes
Is t’ hev him come an’ pay my ennooal texes.
                  [Profoun’ sensation.]
Was ’t he thet shou’dered all them million guns? 
Did he lose all the fathers, brothers, sons? 
Is this ere pop’lar gov’ment thet we run
A kin’ o’ sulky, made to kerry one? 230
An’ is the country goin’ to knuckle down
To hev Smith sort their letters ’stid o’Brown? 
Who wuz the ’Nited States ‘fore Richmon’ fell? 
Wuz the South needfle their full name to spell? 
An’ can’t we spell it in thet short-han’ way
Till th’ underpinnin’s settled so’s to stay? 
Who cares for the Resolves of ’61,
Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun? 
Hez act’ly nothin’ taken place sence then
To larn folks they must hendle fects like men? 240
Ain’t this the true p’int?  Did the Rebs accep’ ’em? 
Ef nut, whose fault is ’t thet we hevn’t kep ’em? 
Warn’t there two sides? an’ don’t it stend to reason
Thet this week’s ‘Nited States ain’t las’ week’s treason? 
When all these sums is done, with nothin’ missed,
An’ nut afore, this school ’ll be dismissed.

I knowed ez wal ez though I’d seen ’t with eyes
Thet when the war wuz over copper’d rise,
An’ thet we’d hev a rile-up in our kettle
’twould need Leviathan’s whole skin to settle:  250
I thought ’twould take about a generation
’fore we could wal begin to be a nation,
But I allow I never did imegine
’twould be our Pres’dunt thet ’ould drive a wedge in
To keep the split from closin’ ef it could. 
An’ healin’ over with new wholesome wood;
For th’ ain’t no chance o’ healin’ while they think
Thet law an’ gov’ment’s only printer’s ink;
I mus’ confess I thank him for discoverin’
The curus way in which the States are sovereign; 260
They ain’t nut quite enough so to rebel,
But, when they fin’ it’s costly to raise h——­,
                  [A groan from Deac’n G.]
Why, then, for jes’ the same superl’tive reason,
They’re ’most too much so to be tetched