Conservative Chorus (poem)

Here's another entry from one of my favorite sources of interesting period material, The Civil War in Song and Story , written by Frank Moore. I take this from my copy, the 1882 edition.

Abraham, spare the South, 

Touch not a single slave;

Nor e'en by word of mouth

Disturb the thing, we crave.

'Twas our forefathers' hand

That Slavery begot; 

There, Abraham, let it stand; 

Thine acts shall harm it not. 

There is no date or author attributed to this ditty, but my guess is it was prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, when speculation about how the US government would handle the slavery question was still going around. I expect it would not have seemed so friendly after the announcement of his plans.

I guess if they wanted to re-title it, "McClellan's March" might be worthy of consideration, given his views on how the war was to be conducted.