Why did you cheer, and weep, and pray?

Why did each pulse of your hearts mark time

To the tramp of the boys in black and gray?

You've not forgotten the nation's call

When down in the South the war-cloud burst;

"Troops for the front!" Do you ever think

Who answered, and marched, and got there first?

Whose bayonets first scared Maryland?

Whose were the colors that showed the way?

Who set the step for the marching North?

Some holiday soldiers in black and gray.

"Pretty boys in their pretty suits!"

"Too pretty by far to take under fire!"

A pretty boy in a pretty suit

Lay once in Bethel's bloody mire.

The first to fall in the war's first fight—

Raise him tenderly. Wash away

The blood and mire from the pretty suit;

For Winthrop died in the black and gray.

In the shameful days in sixty-three,

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