For this gin was made somewhere far up North,
and sent down South to be enslaved,
For it will be used and worked hard,
but it careth not.
The slaves were the ones who worked it,
this machine may selfishly complain,
But it needeth not,
For it does not pick cotton,
it never saw the end of a whip,
never worked late into the night slaving away.
But this machine how corrupt it may be,
was a great machine in it’s day,
but now just sits and waits,
For when cotton stopped and the Yankees burnt it all,
they stayed and stood unused,
waiting, waiting,
For it does not care,
but now they sit unused.
It has long since rusted,
but now people want to see what split the country apart,
For this machine in it’s simplistic design,
Caused the death of many young American boys.
It does not care how many die,
10 thousand, 20 thousand, 30 maybe 100.
It did not fight at the Potomac,
Did not lay in the sunken road at Antietam,
Didn’t charge with bayonet when low on ammo,
that faithful day in Gettysburg.
It did not weep for lost members of the family,
Did not wait for a letter to make sure they were alive,
Did not have to nurse a wound or risk one.
But now people put them in museums,
to honor this machine and the era,
It stopped with the end of that era and never will turn again.