We form our primal battle line;
We hear the guns of Yorktown roar;
O'er West Point see the sun decline.
The Chickahominy we cross,
On Fair Oaks' field we join the fray;
We mourn the gallant Warner's loss,
And all who fell that sad June day.
Across the dark peninsula
We march to reach the James's shore;
We see again the smoke of war
Hang over Glendale's field of gore;
The lapse of time has not concealed
The faces of our comrades brave,
Who on Antietam's gun-swept field
Their noble lives to Freedom gave.
At Fredericksburg the boats we man,
Under the fire from trench and slope,
And, with the Seventh Michigan,
We form once more ‘The forlorn hope.’
On Gettysburg's famed heights we stand,
And form the long, thin line of blue,
Whose courage high, and valor grand,
The fiery Pickett's charge o'erthrew.
All through the gloomy Wilderness,
In rough dug graves we leave our dead;
At Spottsylvania, back we press
The line of gray, by Stuart led.
Cold Harbor's flaming cannon boom,
And thin our weak and shattered lines;
And comrades fall, and find a tomb
Amidst Deep Bottom's tangled vines.
At Petersburg we stand again
Where strong redoubts the hillsides crown;
We see beyond the intrenched plain
The lofty steeples of the town.
Disaster at Reams' Station came,
When from its trenches we are hurled;
On Appomattoxa field of fame
We see the flag of treason furled.
