The taste for musical parody saw Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times, Come Again No More” receive a new set of words to become the “musical bellyache” of the Army of the Potomac.   

HARD CRACKERS (Come Again No More)
Words: Unknown (1st Iowa Regiment?)        Music: Stephen Foster (1826 – 1864)

Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in hand
While we gather 'round the cook tent's door
Where dry mummies of hard crackers are given to each man,
Oh, hard crackers, come again no more!

CHORUS:
'Tis the song and the sigh of the hungry
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more
Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore
Oh, hard crackers, come again no more!

There's a hungry, thirsty soldier, who wears his life away
With torn clothes, whose better days are o'er.
He is sighing now for whiskey and, with throat as dry as hay
Sings," Hard crackers, come again no more!"

CHORUS

'Tis the song that is uttered in camp, by night and day
'Tis the wail that is mingled with each snore.
'Tis the sighing of the soul, for spring chickens far away
Oh, hard crackers, come again no more!

CHORUS

When a compassionate officer ordered corn-meal mush served
as a change of diet, the soldiers, ever bitching, responded:

But to groans and to murmurs there has come a sudden hush,
Our frail forms are fainting at the door;
We are starving now on horse-feed, that the cooks call mush
Oh, hard crackers, come again once more!

CHORUS:
It's the dying wail of the starving
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again once more;
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o'er
Oh, hard crackers, come again once more!
Oh, hard crackers, come again once more!