Handwritten poem entitled "The Blue and Gray of 1867,” penned on two adjoined 7.75 x 12.5 lined sheets, with the upper border reading “as revised by Private Dalzell, May 30 1916.” Dalzell’s five-stanza revision of Francis Miles Finch’s famous 1867 poem, in part: “Let minute guns today intone / The Nation's common loss, / And North and South be ever one / Beneath our Savior’s Cross / United men from sea to sea / Forever and a day / O brothers ever let us be / At peace like Blue and Gray Our Brother let us ever be at peace, like Blue and Gray. / While strife and hatred raged afar, / And e’en pursued the dead, / Kind nature hid the scars of War. /…The heavens wept in silent dew, / The sunshine blazed by day / And sweetly grass and flowers grew / Above the Blue and Gray. / So let the drum and trumpet lead / Processions to these shrines, / To pay the Nations' mournful mead. / Of charity divine— / A coward only hate the dead, / Or evil speaks today / Beneath the Flag now overspread / Above the Blue and Gray.” Signed at the conclusion, “Private Dalzell, James M. Dalzell, Soldier’s Home, Dayton, O. June 2, 1916.” In very good condition, with scattered light creasing, and irregular toning to the first page.
