It took more than soldiers to win a war, and George Henry Boker knew it. A noncombatant himself, Boker realized that the morale of the troops in the field could be lifted considerably by patriotic and sentimental songs and poems. To that end, he exhorted his fellow poets, composers, and lyricists to do their part for the war effort by putting pen to paper and giving life to the words the soldiers needed to hear.
This poem was taken from Boker's Poems of the War, published in 1864 by Ticknor and Fields (Boston).
