General Lee

“Let us cross the river and rest in the shade of trees” Converse like gentlemen, with our bayonets at ease We were once brothers, declaring independence for these lands Now we murder one another, for the right to shackle two hands Where were the voices, emancipating your values from skin Taking the glory from generals, immortalized by crimson sin Lives were railroaded, as Kansas bled into a Missouri stream Bodies buried in the compromise, of a transcontinental dream Was it a War of Secession, or a rebellion of recourse Fire-eaters scorching, an abolitionist’s civil discourse 600,000 lost, tangled in the matted wool of the rancid free One Bloody Shirt cleansed, by Sherman’s March to the Sea Do you still hear their viscid screams, clinging to the charred air Mottled faces crying, broken by artillery soaked fields of despair Gettysburg shook, as corpses crumbled under death’s rolling gait The tide had turned, but war only recognizes one ephemeral state I have heard of leaders, speaking on the residue of tyranny’s grave Reconstructing a widow's faith, eulogizing the sacrifice of the brave So why do we proudly remember, how you outmaneuvered harm Stonewalling the Constitution, before sadly losing your "right arm" **NOTE** The first line of the poem is a quote from Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, as he lay dying from a mortal wound at the battle of Chancellorsville. Upon learning of his greatest commander's death, General Robert E. Lee somberly responded that it was as if he lost his "right arm".