If there was one thing the Confederate soldier enjoyed, it was poking fun at the array of incompetent Union generals sent out to face him in the field. These delightful nursery rhymes, the originals of which are still familiar to modern readers, were collected by Lizzie Cary Daniel when she was a young girl in wartime Richmond. In 1893, some thirty years after Appomatox, Mrs. Daniel pulled out her old scrapbooks, supplemented them with selections from wartime issues of "The Southern Literary Messenger" and "The Illustrated News," and published them as the "Confederate Scrapbook" for the benefit of a memorial bazaar held in Richmond.

The Union luminaries mentioned in the rhymes are (I) John Pope, who had his troubles with Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Second Manassas; (II) Pope again, who lost his uniform coat and hat to JEB Stuart in a raid on Pope's headquarters; (III) Pope and Irwin McDowell, who were both defeated by Southern forces at Manassas (Pope by Robert E. Lee at Second Manassas and McDowell by Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beaureagrd at First Manassas); and (IV) Ambrose Burnside, whose army was thrashed by Lee, Jackson, and James Longstreet at Fredericksburg along the banks of the Rappahannock River.

The "man from the North" mentioned in V presumably is Ulysses S. Grant, who suffered stunning casualties when he went up against the "man from the South," Robert E. Lee, at Cold Harbor. "Old Mother Seward" (VI) was Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward.

"Mother Lincoln's Melodies"

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Last modified 18-April-2001