All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight

A strong, direct account of a Civil War death, 1863.
words by Ethel Lynn Beers
music by John Hill Hewitt

This lyric for this song is a poem called “A Picket Shot” first published in Harper’s Weekly in 1861. It’s author was Ethel Lynn Beers of Goshen, New York. The song title was a phrase commonly used in the newspapers at the beginning of the war. It reported that no significant action was going on. The bright, almost frivolous tune with its waltzing accompaniment emphasizes the irony of the song. This death of a lonely soldier who is far from home is being ignored.


The sheet music:


Backing track:


Lyrics

1. “All quiet along the Potomac to-night”
Except here and there 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
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night!”

2. “All quiet along the Potomac to-night”
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming
And their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon
And the light of the camp fires are gleaming
There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain
And thinks of the two on the low trundle bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night!”

3. His musket falls slack, his face dark and grim
Grows gentle with memories tender
As he mutters a pray’r for the children asleep
And their mother “May heaven defend her!”
The moon seems to shine as brightly as then
That night, when the love yet unspoken
Leap’d up to his lips,and when low murmur’d vows
Were pledg’d, to be ever unbroken
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night!”

4. Then drawing his sleeve roughly o’er his eyes
He dashes off the tears that are welling
And gathers his gun close up to his breast
As if to keep down the heart’s swelling
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree
And his footstep is lagging and weary,
Yet onward he goes, thro’ the broad belt of light
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night!”

5. Hark! was it the night-wind that rustles the leaves!
Was it the moonlight so wond’rously flashing?
It look’d like a rifle! “Ha, Mary, good bye!”
And his life-blood is ebbing and plashing
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night,”
No sound save the rush of the river
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead
“The Picket’s” off duty forever
“All quiet along the Potomac to-night!”


Sung here by Fred Feild: