By: Major Sidney A. Jonas, C.S.A., Mississippi.

This poem was written on the back of a $100.00 Confederate Note,

at the old Powhatan Hotel, Richmond, Virginia, May, 1865.

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Representing nothing on God’s earth now,

And naught in the waters below it.

As the pledge of a Nation that’s dead and gone,

Keep it dear friend and show it.

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Show it to those who will lend an ear

To the tale this trifle can tell,

Of a Liberty born of the patriot’s dream,

Of a storm-cradled Nation that fell.

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Too poor to possess the precious ores,

And too much of a stranger to borrow,

We issue to-day our promise to pay,

And hoped to redeem on the morrow.

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The days rolled on and the weeks became years,

But our coffers were empty still;

Coin was so rare that the Treasury’d quake

If a dollar should drop in the till.

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But the faith that was in us was strong, indeed,

And our poverty well we discerned,

And this little check represented the pay

That our suffering veterans earned.

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We know it hardly a value in gold,

Yet as gold each soldier received it;

It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay,

And each Southern patriot believed it.

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But our boys thought little of price or of pay,

Or of bills that were over-due;

We knew if it brought us our bread today,

’twas the best  our poor country could do.

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Keep it; it tells all our history over,

From the birth of the dream to its last;

Modest, and born of the angel, Hope,

Like our hope of success, it passed.

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From: Confederate Veteran Magazine, Volume I., No. 3., March, 1893, Page 77.