January 10, 1861-Dated Early Civil War Period, Manuscript Poem, Titled "The Star Spangled Banner" Lamenting the Danger Currently Facing the Union as the Secession Crisis Deepens, Fine.
This scarce original Manuscript Poem, 2 pages, measuring 7.6” x 9.8” unsigned, titled: "The Star Spangled Banner" and is dated at the beginning of the Secession Crisis (South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida had already seceded from the Union, though the latter two states were probably unknown to have seceeded at the time to the writer, those actions having just occurred). The writer extolls the glorious history and power of the American flag and of the Union it represents, and then he reacts to the dangers facing the flag, and the prospects of disunion. Typical transmittal folds, some scattered tone, well written in dark easily readable ink on standard wove period paper. This Poem from Punch reads, in part:

Titled: "The Star Spangled Banner"

"The star spangled banner that blows broad & brave,

O'er the home of the free, o'er the hut of the slave

Whose stars in the face of no foe e'er waxed pale,

And whose stripes are for those that the stars dare assail.

Whose folds every year broad & broader have grown;

Till they shadow both arctic & tropical zone,

From the Sierra Nevada to Florida's shore

And, like 'Oliver Twist', are still asking for more.

That banner whose infantine bunting can boast

To have witnessed the Union's great charter engrossed;

Which at Boston saw Freedom's stout struggle begun,

And from Washington welcomed its victory won....

Can it be there are parricide hands that would tear

This star-spangled banner, so broad & so fair?

And if there be hands that would such sacrilege try,

Is the bunting too weak the attempt to defy?

Alas! while its woof Freedom wove in her loom,

She paused in her work, & the Fiend took her room,

And seizing the shuttle that Freedom had left,

Threw Slavery's warp across Liberty's weft...

And now that the blood-rotted warp is worn bare,

The flag it is fraying, the flag it may tear;

For the Fiend cheers on those who to rend it essay,

And the work he's had hand in is apt to give way.

Now, Heaven guide the issue! May Freedom's white hands,

Ere to late, from the flag pluck these blood-rotted strands;

And to battle & breeze fling the banner in proof

That 'tis all her own fabric, in warp as in woof.

If this may not be, if the moment be nigh

When this banner, unrents, shall no more flout the sky,

To make fitting division of beams & of bars,

Let the South have the Stripes, & the North have the Stars.”

The blank reverse of the 4th page repeats the title: "The Star Spangled Banner"