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American Civil War Reassessed
The seeds of self-destructive strife
Were sown soon after drums and fifes
Extolled success from breaking free
From Britain's aristocracy.
The Constitution's writ accedes
Peculiar Institution's needs:
Proportional House seats would be
Increased counting slave property.
Cross purposes within the cloth
Of nationhood revealed the moth
That slowly raveled fine knit strands
Exposing North and South demands.
Decades of wrongs in faint disguise
Betrayed the truth and broke the ties
That bound the states within one cause
And shattered order, faith and laws.
When reason failed to parlay peace
The rift would steadily increase
And split the nation into spheres
With fighters formed from extant fears.
North claiming states could not secede
Waged Civil War against that creed.
South claiming states had rights innate
Then waged a War Between the States.
Long years saw men in Blue and Gray
Lay lifeless forms by path and way
As armies swarmed then crept from fights
And Death employed its solemn rites.
When South drove north exposing flaws
So foreign States would join its cause,
The North held ground forcing retreat
And quashed Rebellion's last entreat.
And, proclaimed end to slavery,
The by-product of strategy,
Emancipates morality
To confront past ignominy.
The storm clouds of impending fate
From intervention dissipate
And war grinds to a bloody halt
With thousands dead as a result.
The Union came to be maintained
With frightful cost of life sustained
Granting renewal to recast stakes,
Haunted by ghosts of past mistakes.
While time would try to heal these wounds,
Those deep cut scars to this day loom.
From tribulation life resumed:
The body politic exhumed.
Copyright ©
John Ransburg
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