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".
Copyright © Xavier Keough | Year Posted 2005
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