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Title
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Blue and Gray Story Newspaper Clipping
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Accession Number
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2024.16.2.179
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Accession Date
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28 October 2025
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Accession Creator
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Meadow Knapp
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Description
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Newspaper clipping of Blue and Gray story
Back has Enchange column
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Storage Location
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Box 28, Folder #4
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Text
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BLUE AND GRAY
"Mother, what do they mean by blue,
And what do they mean by gray?"
Was heard from the lips of a little child
As she bounded in from play.
The mother's eyes filled up with tears;
She turned to her darling fair,
And smoothed a way from the sunny brow
Its treasures of golden hair.
"Why, mother's eyes are blue, my sweet,
And grandpa's hair is gray,
And the love we bear our darling child
"But what did they mean?" persisted the child.
"For I saw two [*******] [censored ableist slur] today,
And one of them said he fought for the blue;
The other fought for the gray.
"Now, he of the blue had lost a leg;
The other had but one arm,
And both seemed worn and weary and sad.
Yet their greeting was kind and warm.
They told of battles in days gone by,
Till it made my young blood thrill;
The leg was lost in the Wilderness fight
And the arm on Malvern Hill.
"They sat on the stone by the farmyard gate
And talked for an hour or more,
Till their eyes grew bright and their hearts seemed warm
With fighting their battles o'er;
And, parting at last with a friendly grasp,
In kindly, brotherly way.
Each called on God to speed the time
Uniting the blue and the gray."
Then the mother thought of other days-
Two staiwart boys from her riven;
How they knelt at her side, and lisping prayed.
"Our father which art in heaven;"
How one wore the gray, and other the blue;
How they passed away from sight,
And had gone to the land where gray and blue
Are merged in colors of light.
And she answered her darling with golden hair,
While her heart was sadly wrung
With the thoughts awakened in the sad hour
By her innocent, prattling tongue;
"The blue and the gray are the colors of God;
They are seen in the sky at even,
And many a noble gallant soul
Has found them passports to heaven."
