Recycling for Military Uses

During the Civil War, the South had far more difficulty than the Union in supplying their forces. One of the items that the Confederates found in short supply was potassium nitrate, one of the components of gunpowder. A chemist in the South figured out how to extract potassium nitrate from urine. His name was John Harrelson.

The Southerners began a program to collect human urine. That led to considerable merriment on both sides of the battlefield:

John Harrelson, John Harrelson, you are a wretched creature,
You've added to this bloody war a new and awful feature,
You'd have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The ladies, bless their pretty dears, should save their piss for nitre,

John Harrelson, John Harrelson, where did you get this notion,
To send your barrel around the town to gather up this lotion,
We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic pissing,

John Harrelson, John Harrelson, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpeter,
For “tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her skirt, she's killing off a Yankee.

John Harrelson, John Harrelson, we’ve read in song and story
How a women’s tears, through all the years, have moistened fields of glory,
But never was it told before, how, ‘mid such scenes of slaughter,
Your Southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water,
No wonder that your boys are brave, who couldn’t be a fighter,
If every time he shot a gun he used his sweethearts nitre?
And, vice-versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder,
Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman’s bladder.

They say there is a subtle smell
That lingers in the powder;
That when the smoke grows thicker,
And the din of the battle louder
That there is found to this compound
One serious objection;
A soldier can not sniff it
Without having an erection.