{"id":14307,"date":"2022-04-10T21:25:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dotcw.com\/?p=3774"},"modified":"2021-07-23T17:14:06","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T22:14:06","slug":"diary-of-a-southern-refugee-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/diary-of-a-southern-refugee-92\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jacket of Gray\u2014Diary of a Southern Refugee, Judith White McGuire."},"content":{"rendered":"

10th.<\/em>\u2014Spent yesterday in the hospital by the bedside of Nathan Newton, our little Alabamian. I closed his eyes last night at ten o’clock, after an illness of six weeks. His body, by his own request, will be sent to his mother. Poor little boy! He was but fifteen, and should never have left his home. It was sad to pack his knapsack, with his little gray suit, and coloured shirts, so neatly stitched by his poor mother, of whom he so often spoke, calling to us in delirium, “Mother, mother,” or, “Mother, come here.” He so often called me mother, that I said to him one day, when his mind was clear, “Nathan, do I look like your mother?” “No, ma’am, not a bit; nobody is like my mother.” The packing of his little knapsack reminds me of<\/p>\n

THE JACKET OF GRAY.<\/p>\n

“Fold it up carefully, lay it aside,
\nTenderly touch it, look on it with pride,
\nFor dear must it be to our hearts evermore,
\nThe jacket of gray, our loved soldier-boy wore.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Can we ever forget when he joined the brave band
\nWho rose in defence of our dear Southern land,
\nAnd in his bright youth hurried on to the fray\u2013
\nHow proudly he donned it, the jacket of gray?<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“His fond mother blessed him, and looked up above,
\nCommending to Heaven the child of her love;
\nWhat anguish was hers, mortal tongue may not say,
\nWhen he passed from her sight in his jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“But his country had called him, she would not repine,
\nThough costly the sacrifice placed on its shrine;
\nHer heart’s dearest hopes on the altar she lay,
\nWhen she sent out her boy in his jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Months passed, and war’s thunders rolled over the land,
\nUnsheathed was the sword, and lighted the brand;
\nWe heard in the distance the sound of the fray,
\nAnd prayed for our boy in the jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Ah, vain, all in vain, were our prayers and our tears;
\nThe glad shout of victory rang in our ears;
\nBut our treasured one on the battle-field lay,
\nWhile the life-blood oozed out on the jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Fold it up carefully, lay it aside,
\nTenderly touch it, look on it with pride,
\nFor dear must it be to our hearts evermore,
\nThe jacket of gray our loved soldier-boy wore.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“His young comrades found him, and tenderly bore
\nThe cold lifeless form to his home by the shore:
\nOh, dark were our hearts on that terrible day
\nWhen we saw our dead boy in the jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Ah, spotted and tattered, and stained now with gore,
\nWas the garment which once he so proudly wore;
\nWe bitterly wept as we took it away,
\nAnd replaced with death’s white robes the jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“We laid him to rest in his cold, narrow bed,
\nAnd ‘graved on the marble we placed o’er his head,
\nAs the proudest of tributes our sad hearts could pay,
\nHe never disgraced the poor jacket of gray.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
“Fold it up carefully, lay it aside,
\nTenderly touch it, look on it with pride,
\nFor dear must it be to our hearts evermore,
\nThe jacket of gray our loved soldier-boy wore.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10th.\u2014Spent yesterday in the hospital by the bedside of Nathan Newton, our little Alabamian. I closed his eyes last night at ten o’clock, after an illness of six weeks. His body, by his own request, will be sent to his mother. Poor little boy! He was but fifteen, and should never have left his home. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":92645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-diary-of-a-southern-refugee-during-the-war-by-judith-white-mcguire"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Judith-White-McQuire.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}