University of Virginia Library

The following song was suggested to my mind in 1860, from three dreams that I had, two previous and one on the night that the Charleston Convention assembled for the purpose of destroying the Union.

I dreamed of a map peddler stopping at my house, and asked me if I wanted to buy a map of the United States. Immediately he spread the map on the floor before me, and when I looked at it, it was all red—alike. I said to the man, “I don't want it, it is all one color— all red. At this he took out his knife and cut the map in two from West to East, right in the middle. I awoke and told my family and a few friends that trouble was brewing, and the Union would be divided.

In a few months after this, I dreamed one night that I was in a strange, wild, wilderness country, on a high eminence, covered with heavy timber and thick underbrush. On the top of this eminence was a queer looking furnace with its boilers heated to their utmost endurance.

Steam whistling out of every little crevice, but no engine or machinery attached! The woods were full of excited people of all sizes, sex and colors. Men on horses dressed in uniform, riding, wild with excitement. By and by, one of those officers came rushing through the woods, crying at the top of his voice, “All you colored people get out side! go out side!!”

I looked behind me and saw a crooked, rail fence, about sixteen rails high. We all rushed for this monstrous fence, and clambered over it in great haste. As I mounted the top rail, I threw one leg over and looked back, and to my surprise, the under-brush had been cleared off as clean as though it never grew there. Then the furnace on the top of the hill began to shoot like cannon. Awfully frightened, we started for home. On our way we crossed a valley and to our left stood two armies, shooting at each other with cannon and small arms. We all stopped to gaze, and two of the cannon were turned toward us, and threw blazing balls, resembling cotton-balls saturated with turpentine I thought one of those blazing shot struck me on the shoulder. I threw off my coat and awoke. I told my friends that trouble was brewing. All the sympathy I would get was a light joke about Joseph.

During the session of the Charleston Convention,

1860, (I think on the first night of the session,) I dreamed that an awful black cloud over-shadowed the whole continent. Men and women were out conjecturing the meaning of the dark day and black cloud. I thought some one said to me “Mc. come out and look, and tell us what is going to happen.” I went out and looked, and lo! the Heavens were overspread with a cloud as black as soot. It extended from horrizon to horrizon, Eastward, Westward and Southward, was as black as midnight. A narrow streak of blue sky could only be seen, stretched along, low down to the earth, in the North. I said to those standing by, “there will be a Universal Storm. It will extend all over the United States; it will be very heavy in the South. England and France will get a small portion, but Canada will escape.

This dream bore with great weight on my mind, and a voice seemed to sing in the air “O! there's warm times coming,” and I could not drive away the impression until I gave vent to my feelings in the following lines: