Ethel Lynn Beers Quote
All quiet along the Potomac, they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing—a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.
The music was by James Hewitt
The Picket Guard, in Harper's Weekly, Sept. 30, 1861
