From the annals of wierd history come the following poems. The rough background is as follows. During the American Civil War the Confederacy (South) required large amounts of saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate-K2N03) since this, along with 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur makes gunpowder. Unfortunately they didn’t have large amounts of potassium nitrate just laying around, so they had to resort to all sorts of ways of getting it (out of manure piles, from cave dirt – think guano, etc.). But perhaps the strangest way was from the urine of the people who stayed at home during the war (who were mostly women). Indeed, women were requested to save their urine for the making of potassium nitrate, hence giving rise the following poems, recently found in the Library of Congress.
An Appeal to John Harrelson
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, you are a wretched creature,
You’ve added to this war a new and awful feature,
You’d have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The ladies, bless their pretty dears, should save their p*ss for nitre,
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, where did you get this notion,
To send your barrel around the town to gather up this lotion,
We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic p*ssing,
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpeter,
For “tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her skirt, she’s killing off a Yankee.
The Yankee reply version:
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, we’ve read in song and story
ars through all the years have moistened fields of glory,
But never was it told before, how, ‘mid such scenes of slaughter,
Your Southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water,
No wonder that your boys are brave, who couldn’t be a fighter,
If every time he shot a 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.
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