We Are Coming Father Abraham

We are coming, Father Abraham—six hundred thousand more,

From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New England's shore;

We leave our plows and workshop?, our wives and children dear,

With hearts too full tor utterance, with but a silent tear;

We dare not look behind us, but steadily before —

We are coming, Father Abraham — three hundred thousand more!

If you look across the hill-tops that meet the northern sky,

Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;

And now the wind an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,

And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;

And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour —

We are coming, Father Abraham — three hundred thousand more!

If you look all up our valleys, where the growing harvests shine,

You may see our sturdy firmer boys fast forming into line,

And children from their mother's knees, are pulling at the weeds,

And learning how to reap and sow, against their country's needs;

And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door;

We are coming, Father Abraham — three hundred thousand more!

You have called us, and we are coming, by Richmond's bloody tide,

To lay us down for freedom's sake, our brothers'' bones beside;

Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the murderous blade,

And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before;

We are coming, Father Abraham — three hundred thousand more!

            – James S. Gibbons

SOURCES: Helen Kendrick Johnson, Frederic Dean, Reginald De Koven and Gerrit Smith, Editors, The World's Best Music: Famous Songs and Those who Made Them, Volume 4, p. 880-3; Rev. J. B. Pradt, Editor, Wisconsin Journal of Education, Volume 7, No. 3, September 1862, p. 81