Stephen Vincent Benet was born July 22, 1898 at Fountain Hill, PA. He died March 13, 1943 of a heart attack. His father and grandfather were career army officers. To his great disappointment, he was unable to serve in the military because of very poor eyesight. His most famous literary works was the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster and his epic poem John Brown’s Body, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1929.

John Brown’s Body was published in 1927. The following passages are from John Browns Body (New York:  Heritage Press) These are the passages that are quoted in the play. Other attributions from other authors are listed separately.

It was still hot in Washington, that September,
Hot in the city, hot in the White House rooms,
Women in houses take their corsets off
And stifle in loose gowns.
Sometimes they pause, and push a window up
To feel the blunt, dry buffet of the heat
Strike in the face and hear the locust-cry
Of shrilling newsboy-voices down the street,
"News from the army -- extra -- terrible battle -- terrible defeat."

It was a little cooler three miles out,
Where the tall trees shaded the soldiers’ home.
The lank man Abraham Lincoln found it so, glad for it, doubtless,
though his cavernous eyes had stared all day in into a distant fog
Trying to pierce it.

General McClellan is now in touch with Lee in front of Sharpsburg
And will attack as soon as this fog clears.
I wish we'd get some news.
Bull Run. The Seven Days, and Bull Run again,
Eighteen months of war and still no end to it.

What is God's will?
They come to me and talk about God's will,
in righteous deputations and platoons,
Day after day, laymen and ministers.
God's will is General This and Senator That,
God's will is those poor colored fellows will,
It's the will of the Chicago churches.
And all of 'em are sure they know God's will,

I'm the only man who does not know it.
And yet, if God should state his will
To others on a point of my own duty,
It might be thought he would reveal it to me directly.
More especially as I so earnestly desire to know his will,
I mean to save the Union if I can,
And by whatever means these hands can find
Under the constitution.

If God reads the hearts of men as clearly as he must,
Then He can read in mine that old scarred wish
that the last slave should be forever free
Here, in this country. I do not go back
From the scarred wish and have not.
But I put the Union first and last before the slave.
If freeing slaves would bring the Union back,
Then I will free them. If by freeing some
And leaving some enslaved, I help my cause,
I will do that. --but should such freedom mean
The wreckage of the Union that I serve,
Then I would not free a slave.

O Will of God!
I'm a patient man, and I can wait.
That's the only virtue I have as I see it,
Ability to wait and hold my own
And keep my own resolves once they are made,
In spite of what the smarter people say,
I can't be smart the way they are smart.
I've known that since I way an ugly child.
It teaches you -- to be an ugly child.

We've come a good long way, my hat and I
Years of law business, years of cracking jokes,
Years of trying to how learn how to handle men,
Or to deal with women, or a woman,
And that's about the hardest task I know.
She'll run like mercury through your hands.
I understand the uses of the earth,
And I have burnt my hands at certain fires
Often enough to know a use for fire,
But when the genius of the water moves,
And that's the woman genius, I'm at sea,
With nothing but old patience for my chart,
And patience doesn't always please a woman.

Earth, fire, and water. I have passed through them all.
Three elements. I have not sought the fourth
Deeply, till now ---the element of air,
The everlasting element of God,
I've never found a church that I could join
Although I've prayed in churches in my time.
The thing behind the words - it's hard to find.
I used to think it wasn't there at all
Couldn't be there. I cannot say that now.
And now I pray to you and you alone.
Teach me to know your will.

There was a man I knew near Pigeon Crick
Who kept a kennel full of hunting dogs,
He'd sell the young ones every now and then,
But the one dog he'd never sell or lend
Was a half deaf foolish look'in hound
You wouldn't think had sense to scratch a flea
Unless the flea were old and sickly too.
Folks plagued that man about the dog
And he agreed with everything they'd say.
No - he ain't much for looks -- or much on speed --
But, mister, that dog is hell on a cold scent.

I am that deaf old hunting dog, O Lord.
I will keep on because I must keep on,
Until you utterly reveal yourself
And sink my teeth in justice soon or late.
I should have run this course with younger legs,
This hunting ground is stiff enough to pull
the metal heart out of a dog of steel,
You could have made a better looking dog
With the same raw materials, no doubt,
But since you didn't this'll have to do.

Therefore I utterly lift up my hands
to YOU, and here and now beseech your aid.
For now, I stand and tremble on the last
Edge of the last cliff a hound beat out.
I can't go on. And yet I must go on.

I will say this. Two months ago I read
My proclamation setting these men free

To Seward and the rest. Then Seward said
Something I hadn't thought of, "I approve
The proclamation -- but if issued now
With our defeat in everybody's mouth
It might be viewed as a last shriek for help,
From a beaten and exhausted government.
Put it aside until victory comes,
Then issue it with victory."

He was right. I put the thing aside -- and ever since
There has been nothing but defeat,
Until this battle now --- and still no news.
But I make this promise to you and to myself.
If this last battle is a victory
My proclamation shall go out at last
To set those other prisoners and slaves
from this next year, then and forever free.
So much for my will. Show me what is yours!

Footsteps in the hall,
Good news, or else they wouldn't come so fast.
What is it, now? Yes, yes I'm glad of that.
I'm very glad. There's no mistake this time?
We have the best of them? They're in retreat?
This is a great day, Stanton....
If McClellan can follow up with a victory now!
Lord, I will keep my promise and go on,
Your will, in much, still being dark to me.
I cannot read it but I will go on.

Almighty God, At best we never seem
To know you wholly, but there's something left,
A strange last courage.
We can fail and fail,
But, deep against the failure, something wars,
Something goes forward, something lights a match,
Something gets up from Sangamon County ground
Armed with a bitten and blunted axe,
And after twenty thousand wasted strokes,
Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground.

If you take a flat map
And move wooden blocks upon it strategically
The thing looks well, the blocks behave as they should.
The science of war is moving live men like blocks.
And getting the blocks into place at a fixed moment.
But it takes time to mold your men into blocks,
And flat maps turn into country, where creeks and gullies
Hamper your wooden squares. They stick in the brush,
They are tired, -- and rest, they straggle after ripe blackberries.
And you cannot lift them up in your hands and move them.
It's all so clear on the maps, so clear in the mind,
But the orders are slow, the men in the blocks are slow---
The General loses his stars and the block men die,
In unstrategic defiance of martial law.

Lincoln, "one most lonely man in a drafty White House whose everlasting melancholy runs like a deep stream under the funny stories…"

(Paraphrased)

They say we're losing. But it doesn't seem a cause can lose when believed in by a man like General Lee. We see a man like General Lee that goes on and we have to follow.
They've got the guns and the money and lots more men.
But we've got to lick them now.
We're not fighting for slaves.
Most of us never owned a slave and never expect to,
It takes money to buy a slave and we're mostly poor,
But we wont lie down and let the North walk all over us
About slaves or anything else.
We don't know how it started,
But they've invaded us and we're bound to fight
Till every last Yankee goes home and quits."

Richmond is fallen -- the letters are written,
The orders given, while stray fighting goes on,
And gray men and blue men die in odd clumps of ground
Before the orders can reach them.
An aide-de-camp seeks a suitable house for the council from a chance farmer.
The first one found is too dirty to please his mind, He picks another.
The chiefs and the captains meet,
Lee erect in his best dress uniform,
His dress-sword hung at his side and his eyes unaltered.
Chunky Grant in his mud splashed private’s gear,
With the battered stars on his shoulders.
They talk awhile of Mexico and old days.
Then the terms are stated.
Lee finds them generous, says so, makes a request.
His men will need their horses for the spring plowing.
Grant assents at once. Lee walks from the little room.
His face unchanged, it will not change when he dies.
The blue men stare at each other
For a space of heartbeats, silent.
It is over...

The room explodes like a bomb, they are laughing and shouting,
Bearded generals waltzing with one another
Everyone talking at once and nobody listening,
It's over -- It's done -- It's finished.
The gray ghost army falls in line for the last time,
There are no cheers or words from the blue line or gray.
Only the sound of feet.
It’s over now.