MARY E. W. BETTS
Reading edition
Mrs. Mary E. Wilson Betts, the author of a single lyric which has preserved her name, was born at Maysville, Kentucky, in January, 1824. Miss Wilson was educated in the schools of her native town, and, on July 10, 1854, she was married to Morgan L. Betts, editor of the Detroit Times. She died at Maysville two months later, or on September 19, 1854, of congestion of the brain, believed to have been caused by the great gunpowder explosion near Maysville on August 13, 1854. Mrs. Betts's husband died in the following October. While she wrote many poems, her brief tribute to Col. William Logan Crittenden, kinsman of John J. Crittenden, who was a member of Lopez's filibustering expedition to Cuba, in 1850, has preserved her name for the present generation. Colonel Crittenden was captured by the Cubans, shot, and his brains beaten out. Before the shots were fired he was requested to kneel, but he made his now famous reply: "A Kentuckian kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing his enemy!" When, in her far-away Kentucky home, Mrs. Betts learned of Crittenden's fate, she wrote her tribute to the memory of the gallant son of Kentucky, which was first printed in the Maysville Flag. The editor introduced the little poem thus: "The lines which follow are from one of Kentucky's most gifted daughters of song. Upon gentler themes the tones of her lyre have oft been heard to breathe their music. To sing to the warrior, its cords have ne'er been strung till now; the tragic death, and last eloquent words of the gallant Crittenden, have caused this tribute to his memory." This poem has been republished many times and in various forms. During the Spanish-American war in 1898 it was often seen in print as being typical of the courage of the soldiers of this country.
Bibliography. Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, by A. C. Quisenberry (Louisville, 1906); Kentuckians in History and Literature, by J. W. Townsend (New York, 1907).
A KENTUCKIAN KNEELS TO NONE BUT GOD!
[From The Maysville Flag]
Ah! tyrants, forge your chains at will— Nay! gall this flesh of mine: Yet, thought is free, unfettered still, And will not yield to thine! Take, take the life that Heaven gave, And let my heart's blood stain thy sod; But know ye not Kentucky's brave Will kneel to none but God! You've quenched fair freedom's sunny light, Her music tones have stilled, And with a deep and darkened blight, The trusting heart has filled! Then do you think that I will kneel Where such as you have trod? Nay! point your cold and threatening steel— I'll kneel to none but God! As summer breezes lightly rest Upon a quiet river, And gently on its sleeping breast The moonbeams softly quiver— Sweet thoughts of home light up my brow When goaded with the rod; Yet, these cannot unman me now— I'll kneel to none but God! And tho' a sad and mournful tone Is coldly sweeping by; And dreams of bliss forever flown Have dimmed with tears mine eye— Yet, mine's a heart unyielding still— Heap on my breast the clod; I'll kneel to none but God! My soaring spirit scorns thy will—