Haun's Mill in Verse
Eliza R. Snow
"Here, in a land that Freemen call their home,
Far from the influence of Papal Rome;
Yes, in a mild and tolerating age
The saints have fallen beneath the barb'rous rage
Of men inspired by that misguiding hate,
Which ignorance and prejudice create.
Ill fated men, whose minds would hardly grace
The most ferocious of the brutal race.
Men, without hearts, else would their bosoms bleed
At the commission of so foul a deed
As that when they at Shoal Creek, in Caldwell,
Upon an unresisting people fell,
Whose only crime was daring to profess the
ETERNAL PRINCIPLES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS!
'T'was not enough for that unfeeling crew
To murder men—they shot them through and through,
Frantic with rage, they poured their molten lead
Profusely on the dying and the dead,
For mercy's claim, which Heaven delights, to hear,
Fell disregarded, on relentless ears.
Long o'er the scene of that unhappy eve
Will the lone widow and the orphan grieve.
Their savage foes with greedy avarice fir'd,
Plundered their murder'd victims and rctir'd,
And at the shadowy close of parting day
In slaughter'd heaps husbands and fathers lay,
There lay the dead and there the dying ones,
The air reverberating with their groans;
Night's sable sadness mingled with the sound,
Spread a terrific hideousness around.
Ye wives and mothers think of woman then,
Left in a group of dead and dying men,
Her hopes were blasted, all her prospects riv'n
Save one, she trusted in the God of Heaven;
Long for the dead her widow'd heart will crave
A last kind office, yes—a decent grave.
Description fails—Tho' language is too mean
To paint the horrors of that dreadful scene.
All things are present to His searching eye
Whose ears are open to the raven's cry."
[-Miss E. R. Snow, Times and Seasons, Vol. 1].