To the
Corn-fed Army of Tennessee.
"Short Rations" (1864)
Words concocted by
Ye Tragic
Music gotten up by
Ye Comic

Augusta, GA: Blackmar Bro.
Lith. by J. T. Paterson & Co.
[Source: 094/096@Levy]

1.
Fair ladies and maids of all ages,
  Little girls and cadets howe’er youthful,
Homeguards, quartermasters and sages,
  Who write for the news papers so truthful!
Clerks, Surgeons and Supes, Legislators,
  Staff Officers (fops of the Nation),
And even you dear speculators,
  Come list to my song of starvation!

CHORUS [sung after each VERSE]
For we soldiers have seen something rougher,
  Than a storm, a retreat, or a fight,
And the body may toil on and suffer,
  With a smile, so the heart is all right!

2.
Our bugles had roused  up the camp,
  The heavens look’d dismal and dirty,
And the earth look’d unpleasant and damp,
  As a beau on the wrong side of thirty.
We were taking these troubles with quiet,
  When we heard from the mouths of some rash ones,
That the army was all put on diet,
  And the Board had diminished our rations.

3.
Reduce our rations at all?
  It was difficult, yet it was done,
We had one meal a day, it was small,
  Are we now, oh! ye gods! to have none?
Oh! ye gentlemen issuing rations,
  Give at least half her own to the State,
Put a curb on your maddening passions,
  And commissarries commisserate!

4.
Tell me not of the Lacedemonian,
  Of his black broth and savage demeanor,
We keep up a faceless Plutonian,
  Yet I’d swear our corn coffee is meaner!
Tell me nothing of Ancients and strangers,
  For, on seeing our Southern bred Catos,
I have laughed at old Marions’s rangers,
  Who feasted on roasted potatoes!

5.
Erewhiles we had chickens and roasters,
  For the fowls and pigs were ferocious,
We would send them to short Pater Nosters,
  And the deed was not stamped as atrocious;
But since men have been shot for the same,
  We parch corn, it is healthier, but tougher—
The chickens and pigs have got tame,
  But the horses and mules have to suffer.

Verse_Lyric: 6
6.
But the “Cornfed” is proof to all evils,
  Has a joke for all hardships and troubles,
In honor and glory he revels,
  Other fancies he looks on as bubbles!
He is bound to be free, and he knows it,
  Then what cares he for toil and privation!
He is brave, and in battle he shows it,
  And will conquer in spite of starvation.