{"id":5620,"date":"2019-10-07T11:49:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=5620"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:41","slug":"uncivil-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/uncivil-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncivil Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nLet us! my dear friend, console ourselves for the unsuccessful efforts of our lives to serve our fellow creatures by recollecting that we have aimed well.
\n~~Dr. Benj. Rush to John Adams about the day they signed the Decl. of Ind.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Battle Lines<\/h2>\n
Nor cringe if come the night: \r\nWalk through the cloud to meet the pall, \r\nThough light forsake thee, never fall \r\nFrom fealty to light. \r\n     ~~Melville, The Enthusiast \r\n     \r\n<\/pre>\n
Long I’ve plotted an epic poem, a poem to stand in relation to my native country as those broad stripes stand in relation to our flag. The subject would have to be the Civil War, of course; it was then, as at no time since the Revolution, that the country grew articulate in self-definition. Lincoln was the poet we elected president. The Civil War generation was the most letter-writing cohort of warriors America has ever produced. Brother fought brother, fathers took up arms against their sons, and slaves escaped to return fire at their former masters–and then forgive them when they stood in post-war relation to each other as citizens.<\/p>\n
And when articulation failed, and all the buzzwords of secession and abolition grew sharp as bayonets, the forges of war found their tongues, and vile shrapnel was vomited in Shenandoah’s sleepy dells. The Civil War, like every war, found its heroes on both sides of the battle line; unknown men arose who proved equal to their times and mastered the moment presented them.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
On a personal level, as I contemplated my (potentially calamitous) approach to a Civil War epic, I found myself confounded as much as coddled by the breakneck immensity of resources available to investigate the old wounds of yesteryear. All things lead to all things via the lightspeed factcheck that Google presupposes. And where facts were in dispute, the very best disputations were available–along with interactive 3D battlemaps, and endless chances to reengage and rejigger the results with computer game simulations or alternative history sci-fi. As a poet, I am most drawn to pipe-smoking and twiddling long strands of grass between my thumbs. Books are fuel for mules; how much more senseless was a digital dive into the cacophonous black hole of internet archives.<\/p>\n
Still, in all, I did a fair amount of death-grip gazing into backlit screens, and mumbling over luminous words in book after book. I felt the hair-raising chill of listening to surviving veterans cry out a final Rebel Yell on YouTube from a 1923 reunion, each man aimed at the microphone and camera and instructed by a friendly fat man to “Do your worst, Grandpa.” And then one last cry in unison, and every cat in the house snapped to look at the speaker as if at a ghost. I’m sure a dog would have returned the unearthly howl.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
How, exactly, I asked myself, was the Civil War that “most American of all America’s wars” after the Revolution itself? Where, exactly, is the anchoring pin in this crazy pinwheel of deeds? The Gettyburg Address? The glum dignity in the surrender at Appomattox, where Lee surrendered his sword while Grant attempted polite small talk to ameliorate the sting of defeat his fiercest foe surely felt? I take some comfort in Yeats’ statement (who midwifed modern Ireland into being in many ways), when he said “It is always necessary to affirm and to reaffirm that nationality is in the things that escape analysis.” Perhaps all my moody brooding was for naught. I should be content to be a teller of tales, a stenographer of fact. In any case, hesitation on my grand project was no longer an option–whatever America was and whatever being an American meant would be an emergent quality that arose from dream and poem. So, I’d better start writing.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
You may have noticed that you are not holding an epic poem in your hands. That ambition my muse has decided to deny me in this round at the foundry. But, page after page, you’ll find flickers whisked together; you can follow muddy footprints to Shiloh, or pace over an acre of Petersburg’s siege as I have done. Whether these poems are equal to their theme, the reader must discover. Every poet has his Zoilus, as they say, and if mine is reading this book today or is yet to be born, I do not know. Still, there’s something here that time has folded and put in my pocket.
\nI give it to you.<\/p>\n
Gregg Glory\r\nMay 5, 2019\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
True and Untrue;
\nor, The Facts of the Matter<\/h3>\n
\tI hadn't seen a piece of soap in a year.\r\n\t     ~~John T. Wickersham\r\n<\/pre>\n
Yeats’ “affable, Falstaffian man” is as much a part of the story of his Irish civil war as those great public events of the rebellion in poems like “Easter 1916.” No one wants to distort the facts, but even a selection of facts slants the story. And poetry is more than mere story, it is the soul of every story. Poetry tells the facts why they must be true. Like the formula of the alchemist, or the equation of the quantum mechanic, poetry arbitrates, through exploration and discovery, the bounds of our reality.<\/p>\n
The historian has a hard road, and must site map and affidavit for his every step. A poet, when his soul’s alight, burns away the tightrope that he treads. These poems seek a meaning in-between these stark extremes. Helen and the burning tower is no more evocative than Lincoln in his tophat. Well, not necessarily. The eye that weeps the tear, floods the landscape. A nation’s history is crafted by its participants; they see, they feel the meaning of the thing. For one’s truth to become a public truth, it must resonate–in both emotion and in fact. History is no free ride for those with an ax to grind, for those who would delete the subjectivities of the past with their Buzzfeed-fresh agenda.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, my approach is hedged round with doubts. I’m trying to find the seed of things in the desiccated plant on the sill. Sometimes, a very personal approach, a singular story, helps flesh the skeleton whose hand I hold while he tells his dead man’s tale. Sometimes, it is only through the torrent of future events that some aspect of the past has grown significant. And here, the mirror is watery. I fret and pull the threads of fate; I squint and wipe the ocean from my diver’s mask, hoping to reach the beach.<\/p>\n
Quotation and epigraph abound in these poems to lessen the culpability of Clio’s amanuensis. Lee and Lincoln are brought to the docket to testify on their own behalf; or words recorded by others are introduced to damn or indemnify the figure on trial. Such a strategy has its own half-life, and the phrases used can cut against the organic unity of the poem even as they apply a thin veneer of authority to the proceedings. Rhythm is the one vitality that no poem can do without, and my slinky attraction to quotation can leave me in the unenviable position of a mynah bird, eerily reiterating the last words of a murder victim.<\/p>\n
There are several other common dangers in this sort of poeticization of history. One can succumb to the expert’s hip elision, a habit of reference that only communicates to those already “in the know.” This is already a danger in poetry generally, which prefers by far to implicate than to provide evidence. With factual antecedents, the danger of missed connections increases, and the poem’s secret limbic system is liable to go offline or develop incoherent buboes. “Only connect…” was James Dickey’s rigorous dictum, and maintains its imperative strength to this day. It is ignored at the author’s, and, more importantly, the reader’s, peril.<\/p>\n
In this collection, abortions along the highway to an epic birth, the language alternates rather harshly between a creampuff softness and the bony planks of bare narrative. In “Night Ride (Toward Gettysburg),” there is so much dreaminess that the rider on his horse literally falls asleep! The entire poem is a subjective guess, almost wholly an invention born of one small act of fact. The epigraph to the poem tells the fact: completely exhausted regiments fell asleep in their saddles while riding toward the next day’s battlefield. And this detail, to me, was the seed, the soul, of the contrasting humanity and inhumanity of war–in all times and places. Still, there’s a queasy awkwardness I feel in filling out a page that history left blank. These men in blue and grey, and all the others, slave and civilian, are my national companions, and I am loathe to touch their suffering as if it were my own.<\/p>\n
And sometimes, of course, the stars are gone and the moon is down.<\/p>\n
As a kind of dry repentance for my sins of invention–a Lenten giveback to God above–there are a number of passes at narrative verse in these pages. These can feel too simple, “ripped from the headlines” as the TV movies say. A pristine example is “The Midnight Ride of Abraham Lincoln,” which is just literally Ward Hill Lamon’s report of Lincoln telling Lamon the story of his nail-biting escape from a gunman, gussied up a touch and poured into a vacant vase of verse. Lincoln is a master storyteller, and I couldn’t improve upon his shaggy dog tale if I had two MFAs.<\/p>\n
An ampler, and more typical, example of the process of transition from history to poetry is available in “Pieces of the Old Battle Flag.” It is practically unrhymed, and virtually without invention. I changed John Wickersham’s name to Ned. He left his own narrative about coming home from the war, and I read it in B.A. Botkin’s collection of Civil War tales and folktales. Its simplicity and reality left me trashed with tears. My poem, direct as it is, manages to miss a great deal of his easy poignancy–and yet it is my best attempt at a teetering retelling. I left all the symbols in de minimus outline, and make the reader rip his humanity on the hard edges of the words. There’s very little “mood music” to queue up the reader’s response. Even reading it out loud, the old-fashioned sound of it is more like a grandfatherly wheedle than a poem. And yet it stands, returned to the page even as John\/Ned returned to the uncomprehending arms of his family.<\/p>\n
Between fact and abstraction, there is certainly room for legitimate invention–coloring inside the lines, as it were. But how different from the satisfaction of Milton’s Satan, standing shaggy-legged and monstrous against a Deity of perfection! I’m as reconciled as a pendulum to my method.<\/p>\n
As for a third kind of poem, those that have grown truly unfashionable, anthems of anything other than naked identity, I can refer most reassuringly of all to the historical record. Many are the casuistries and verities of that distant day. Even the nimble Timrod parsed out his “Ethnogenesis,” mad with reified abstractions to unseat the Northern tyrants from their “evil throne.” But, to me, the “terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,” of that poetry, like Thomas Read’s “Sheridan’s Ride,” has more in common with the verified goodness of verse than the many idiot rants that assail my ears in the New Yorker, each one banking on the slim authority of “my truth” to avoid a scrupulous accounting of their faults. These are my chosen battle lines, where poetry and history meet and conflict.<\/p>\n
I have squared off in my corner, and will defend my stance against all comers. And so I can say, with unironic vigor:<\/p>\n
    Assemble! \r\nGhosts of a time not yet made witless....\r\n\r\n\tGGB\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Uncivil Hours<\/h2>\n
What tragedy befell us in those days \r\nIs not mine alone to toll, to tell--\r\nA thousand voices, a million all \r\nWailing in abominable chorus could not \r\nConvey the terror, anxiety and waste \r\nOf those dead days. \r\n\r\nWhatever one man can carry \r\nOut of Hell, I'll carry to tell you. \r\nWhat words cannot do, let bones \r\nKnitted by raw time at the breaks \r\nDisplay in mute witness.  \r\n\r\n                         Assemble! \r\nGhosts of a time not yet made witless, \r\nArmies whose worn shoulders show \r\nAs increasing mist, gather without regard \r\nTo blue or grey, and let your old voices \r\nRoll coldly now that once had the hot \r\nImprint of youth.\r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
TROUBLE AT THE FORD<\/h2>\n
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.\r\n     ~~Herman Melville \r\n\r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
The Abolitionist Congregation<\/h2>\n

\nAnd about this time, I had a vision–and I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened–thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams.<\/em>
\n~~Nat Turner<\/p>\n
The preacher in his pulpit blazed: \r\n\"One God for them and us! \r\nNever once since the seventh day \r\nHas God divided races-- \r\nIt's man by man we're saved \r\nOr damned and thrown to Hades.\" \r\n\r\nA peace surpassing passed among \r\nThe Boston congregants; \r\nThey knew a truth and knew it strong \r\nBeyond all argument. \r\nThey stood in choir and raised great song \r\nAbove collars starched and neat: \r\n\r\n\"Let salvation's mustard seeds \r\nBe blown among the nations--\r\nWhere it grows their taste shall be \r\nSharp for generations. \r\nLet war pour forth the blood we need\r\nTo hasten our germination!\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Why the Confederacy Became<\/h2>\n

\nFanaticism is inculcated in the Northern mind and ingrained in the Northern heart, so that you may make any compromise you please, and still, until you can unlearn and unteach the people, we shall find no peace….<\/em>
\n~~Overheard at Virginia’s secession convention<\/p>\n
Attack our ways and wound our own\r\nWho'd brought Jefferson and Washington\r\nAnd all those famous firsts to stirrup--\r\nRebel men who would not give up\r\nBeating pell-mell into the dawn\r\nVirginian steeds, and would not stop.\r\n\r\nNow that revolutionary dawn\r\nGrows stale and cold in Northern hearts,\r\nTyranny grinds with iron wheels\r\nAll minds and every thought.\r\nHow can they who hammer and cog\r\nFind valor in a ball of cotton?\r\n\r\nTo no king nor any petty liege\r\nShall rebel spines bend what brave\r\nSteel runs through them yet: let\r\nAll come!  Let gamblers place their bets! \r\nBefore the first Virginian grieves\r\nYankee widows will pace and fret.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The War Comet;
\nor, Oola’s Prophecy<\/h2>\n

\nYou see dat great fire sword, blazin’ in de sky? Dat’s a great war coming and de handle’s to’rd de Norf and de point to’rd de Souf, and de Norf’s gwine take dat sword and cut de Souf’s heart out.<\/em>
\n~~Oola’s prophecy, as told to Lincoln<\/p>\n
A shadow at the bedroom window \r\nTall without his stovepipe hat; \r\nLong his looking at the ragged coal \r\nOf the fiery sword of comet. \r\n\r\nHis tan hand patted a padded pocket    \r\nIn time to a nameless tune; \r\nA time was coming to grasp the sword, \r\nAnd the time for peace near gone. \r\n\r\nThe comet flickered, weak and wily, \r\nWhile clockhands met in prayer-- \r\nHis eyes upcast to skies to read \r\nWhat was written there in fire. \r\n\r\nWhat moved one heart would move a million; \r\nBoth for and against, it flashed; \r\nThe man in the black coat turned, and turned \r\nAgain, in the shadow of fire and ash. \r\n\r\nRestless fingers in his pocket then \r\nMoved upon the restless words: \r\nHe hath loosed the fateful lightning\r\nOf his terrible, swift sword. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Anaconda Unwound<\/h2>\n

\nWinfield Scott takes McClellan aside after a White House winter dance
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Comes the winter as came the summer, comes war \r\nAs sure across the Potomac when spring unhinges-- \r\nAll's a dance, McClellan, verily a dance.  Dash and pause, \r\nAnd pause, and dash.  I've seen it snake across the years, \r\nWily or swift, snap-jaw or anaconda pressure-hold, \r\nMate and checkmate as the tables turn, as time \r\nReveals the pattern waiting in the dance. \r\nWhen the Whigs put me up for president in '52 \r\nOur notions for the nation were leggiero, \r\nLightly, lightly, the high baton mocking the drum's \r\nHard-tapped time;  but the country then was all \r\nLilt and liberamente, the dour South already skittish \r\nAt school-marm abolitionists preaching through their teeth\r\nSturm und drang drama from Northern pulpits. \r\nAnd Time the snake hissed me out of office:  \r\nSsstay a sssoldier, Sscott, await the drat of duty's drum  \r\nWhen time's old do-si-do comes round again. \r\n--Yes, yes, as you say, tonight's cotillion  \r\nWas an elegant affair, you the prettiest man, \r\nMcClellan, ever to show a leg upon those boards. \r\nThe ladies smiled as if some young Napoleon \r\nHad asked their hand, and turned a tune with them. \r\nFine times, fine times, but as I was saying--\r\nThe plan, the plan that stays unstated says: defeat!\r\nMust return to the topic, as the snake to his coils.\r\nI've heard time's sad lento movement unroll \r\nAs well;  spent a dead year imprisoned in cold \r\nCanadian irons, legs listless that had been restless.\r\nIn 1812, I little knew, and less guessed\r\nHow such lento languishment led on in time\r\nTo hazardous pizzicato punch and push:\r\nAt Lundy's Lane, one fighting night above Niagara,\r\nTroops unready for the Brits' fire and bitumen-- \r\nA blaze of blood to end all advancing, \r\nRifles' firelight a flame of snake in the waters,\r\nThe falls a sourceless roar around us: war! \r\nThe dead spilled everywhere like Indian beads.... \r\nI would not have such red spillage now. No, \r\nDash and pause is the plan, a sidewinder waltz. \r\nWait, and work the odds, then pitch the table  \r\nHard enough, and the most stubborn marble rolls. \r\nConfine the Confederates from advance, cinched \r\nHip-by-jowl in our close contredanse--slow \r\nThe fiddle, and slow the fife--here at Washington. \r\nThen twenty loaded gun boats, and forty more of men \r\nTo sweep the Mississippi's spine quite clear, \r\nA slithering pas-de-deux, in one blasting pass; \r\nAnd make what blockade we can at oceanside, \r\nThreading in ships-of-the-line at adagio speed. \r\nSoon you'll see, without the terrible expense \r\nOf invasion and defense, the dance'll come \r\nBack round to us.  Cotton will go rotten on their docks! \r\nPlantation men are money men, McClellan, \r\nThose fire-eaters will be in a fix but quick, \r\nWith cold water hosing down their backs! \r\nIt all winds round to politics--the dance \r\nOf dash and pause, the slink and strike of snakes. \r\nIf, by gunboat and blockade, we impose a pause-- \r\nDash against dash must annihilate in peace, \r\nAs self-meeting ripples cancel when they kiss. \r\nLet's spare our southern brethren and ourselves. \r\nI would not raise my hand against my feet; \r\nThe dance is not a dance that has no steps.... \r\nLet us lace our anaconda constrictor  \r\nAround the rebel states, and let the pauses \r\nPull them home by inches to our loving arms. \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Choosing Sides; or,
\nMark Twain Enters the War, Almost<\/h2>\n

\nIf the bubble reputation can only be obtained at the cannon’s mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty.
\n~~Mark Twain
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Here at Hannibal, Zeb, unhurried waters\r\nAin't much in a fit, so let's us not rush \r\nAs war turns its great gears--let time loiter, \r\nTurn the riverboat wheel like a paint brush, \r\nAnd see what water greenesses unfold.... \r\n  \r\nWar's not such a thing as we've been told \r\nReading chivalrous tales of Ivanhoe \r\nAnd gettin' on a horse dressed up like a stove. \r\nWhat it is, though, I don't likely know. \r\nSaw little kids parading, yelling \u2018Jeff Davis!' \r\n  \r\nSince there's not yet no song for all this  \r\nWhatever it is the country's doing, tearing  \r\nItself to nothing like a worried bone. \r\nWhat dog's got us in its teeth?  Go wary, \r\nZeb, them Union men mayn't leave us alone \r\n  \r\nAs we row along to Memphis.  At home \r\nThey'll be busy choosing sides, picking teams \r\nFor all this folderol of flags and hats. \r\nTake the bend easy, who knows what dreams \r\nWe may disturb at the blockade, or what-- \r\n  \r\n(A cannonball smashes the pilothouse windows out.)\r\n  \r\n\"Good Lord a'mighty, Sam, what'd they mean by that!?\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A Parade of Gallantry<\/h2>\n

\n“I am Henry Wilson,” said he, “United States Senator;” but the teamster, perfectly unmoved by the announcement of the dignity and importance of his petitioner, cried out, “I don’t give a — who you are,” and lashing his mules, sped on his way.
\n~~Cornelia McDonald
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\"A parade of gallantry, surely,\" she said, \r\nServants fetching fourth the wrapped roasted \r\nChicken and basket of champagne to pop the cork \r\nWhen push becomes shove, and those rapscallions \r\nRun high-tailin' it home.  \"They look so small, \r\nEven in the opera glass, our men, Henry--\r\nHave a glance where dusts are gathering some.\"\r\n\r\nUnfolded by their picnic, idle congressman and wife\r\nThought a day of arms would settle a ten years' strife\r\nAnd snug closed the fraternal argument sprung\r\nOpen among wide America's battalion of brothers.\r\n\"There's a snap, hear it? And some skinny pink fingers\r\nAmid the cotton balls. Must've crossed Bull Run, swung\r\nLeft into their scattered flank. Soon we'll see, dear.\r\nPass the asparagus, thanks.\" \r\n\r\n                             Sometimes a little cheer\r\nRose among the checkered blankets, ragged and thin\r\nAs half of Congress applauded itself, the creek \r\nThickening with skirmish, and, after a few hours, \r\nGhostly and sickening, the Rebel Yell, \r\nAs if from those about to die and win.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Traveling Darkroom; or,
\nMathew Brady Carrying a Camera<\/h2>\n

\nEyes that… stare too wide to close.
\n~~ W. D. Snodgrass <\/em><\/p>\n
A spirit in my feet said \u2018Go,’ and I went.
\n~~Mathew Brady<\/em><\/p>\n
More dark!  More dark!  Let's see at last \r\nWhat war has left upon my plated glass. \r\nCarrying my heavy camera to the front, crumbed\r\nIn dust, I frame the conflict with an artist's thumb.\r\nHere at Bull Run the NY fire zouaves \r\nPut a sword in my hand that I might preserve \r\nLife and limb a minute longer when the Federal line \r\nCollapsed snakelike, a windtorn kite's dead twine. \r\nEach plate I rescued from the field of battle, \r\nSlimed with collodion like a salamander's \r\nSkin, mirrors in miniature the exploding world:\r\nShells like sunbursts, spasmed faces angry and bold.\r\nI follow troops in my long duster;  a black tent,  \r\nMy traveling darkroom, dragged on horsecart. \r\nThat's where alchemy becomes advertisement, \r\nSo newspapers can print what war has wrought. \r\nWith exposure, light passes through a glass \r\nDarkly and excites the emulsion, as \r\nGod shining down upon the soul does. \r\nBathed in ferrous sulfate, I bring forth those \r\nFinal images of modern men from time's \r\nGluey muck, shuffle the glass cards, and then \r\nFix 'em like an insect pinned in my collection. \r\nThe mortician's touch of potassium cyanide-- \r\nToo perfect to change!  Let's see what verified \r\nHeroes come jumping from this chemic pool, \r\nThe square of ruby light catching me coolly \r\nRed-handed at my work.  When John Q. Adams \r\nSat in studio with his lion's mane, \r\nI felt Franklin's lightning beat my fist and let \r\nThe shutter drop on history, my best \r\nCamera lens the doll's eye of posterity.   \r\nFrom the first, I pledged to my country \r\nTo save the faces of historic men and mothers \r\nSo we citizens might recognize each other. \r\nSomething's coming through now, shapes of shapes. \r\nI see the tilde of a zouave officer's flying cape--\r\nWould-be blue blurs are moving over clearer \r\nFigures grinded to a stillness nearer \r\nThe killing ground... are these all dead bodies? \r\n\r\nIn cartes de visite I made my first real money; \r\nI told departing soldiers packing their haversacks \r\nDown at the recruiting station: Tell your Mom that \r\n\"You cannot tell how soon it may be too late.\"  \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Trouble at the Ford<\/h2>\n

\nSometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
\n~~Donald Trump
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Did that dread-sick blue-grey couple spin \r\nDrunk about a cracking axle? \r\nBroken music of the grand battle \r\nSwings mud-laden boys around again \r\nWhere Bull Run stream breaks the land \r\nAnd a gambler nation lays its longshot hand. \r\n\r\nCongress came with cakes and wine, \r\nGallantry to make fine ladies swoon \r\nShot and counter-shot done by noon, \r\nCheckerboard kings crowned by dying men. \r\nBut the dancers of that great game \r\nWere blind, and soon enough grew lame. \r\n\r\nSoon confusion enfiladed every line, \r\nFilleted the Union on their back \r\nReversed them down their beaten track \r\nAs if all clocks rewound the time; \r\nAlthough new blood flowed by the old Stone Bridge \r\nDefeat was all men had to give. \r\n\r\n10,000 men in grey gave hellish chase; \r\n10,000 blues threw down their guns \r\nTo ease the striding of their run--\r\nA wild rebel yell bid them haste \r\nWhile summer ladies whipping parasols \r\nRaced pell-mell through Congress' halls. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A Bedside Whitman<\/h2>\n

\nBacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr, and rank.
\n~~Bronson Alcott’s description of Whitman <\/em><\/p>\n
Two boat loads came about half-past seven last night. A little after eight it rain’d a long and violent shower. The pale, helpless soldiers had been debark’d, and lay around on the wharf and neighborhood anywhere.
\n~~Whitman, The Wounded from Chancellorsville<\/em><\/p>\n
Whitman loped through hospital wards \r\nHis brotherly shoulders huge and stooped \r\nOver the endless injured. \r\n\r\nWhitman bending through hospital wards \r\nWiped the weeping white-hot iron brows \r\nOf heroes held down. \r\n\r\nWhitman sat attentive in the hospital wards \r\nBig spry hands cradling an inch of pencil stub \r\nTaking restless dictation. \r\n\r\nWhitman walked the rounds in hospital wards \r\nDripping water careful as communion wine \r\nWhere dry mouths chirped. \r\n\r\nWhitman exited backlit hospital wards \r\nNightly beneath the rapid stars \r\nStriding, striding, striding.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
HIGH PISGAH<\/h2>\n

\nI sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
\n~~ W.E.B. Dubois
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Reenactors<\/h2>\n
We come in clothes of yesterday to save tomorrow's history. \r\nWith lifesavers of facts, we enter Heraclitus' stream \r\nAnd run time backward until we see fons et origo of \r\nToday's catastrophe.  With Thucydides we wade to war \r\nAnd drive our wayward Volvos home by GPS and guess; \r\nHere, Lee. There, Buell camped or tramped, tents speared \r\nHeavenward in plea and supplication--a million Iphigenias \r\nSacrificed upon the bow when confounding headwinds blew \r\nUs back upon ourselves, pledges that've rattled packed \r\nSince Adams and Hancock fled the Redcoat flood to Concord. \r\nWords must amend what time upends. So we, doughty \r\nIn our woolen socks, with crates of hardtack rations bought \r\nBy ApplePay, are walking words buttoned up to do some good \r\nOn Instagram and Facebook, where kids will laugh at Dads. \r\n\"We inhabit the post-apocalypse of Lincoln in blue and grey,\"  \r\nI say beneath my Union selfie. \"We're the zombies of that day!\"  \r\nYoung emoticons undercut me with memes and zingers \r\nAs I pace my final picket circuit and whistle back to camp: \r\n\"We will rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain...\" \r\nAnd wild in the woods, when the moon intrudes on shoulders \r\nTapping us back to a fantastical past, it is for us alone \r\nThe campfire hustles, the smell of rashers real in air, \r\nCold muskets carefully at-ready, our scripts pre-written \r\nWho believe no more in God or Fate.  Are we the men  \r\nOur forbears were, wakeful where they slept? Tomorrow's  \r\nTableaux vivant tautens invisibly in dreams, the battle lines \r\nDrawn in ready dust, the punch and counterpunch of armies \r\nArresting rest, until we, too, fill our diaries with prayers. \r\n\r\n\"I do not know what comes, my dear, for me, although I know\r\nGreat forces constellate about this present nexus, with only \r\nInches of river between the drowned man and the saved. \r\nI remember you, the farm, our home;  and you again, my love.\"  \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
To the North Star<\/h2>\n

\nWhen I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.
\n~~ Harriet Tubman, crossing the Mason-Dixon line
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Follow me, follow the North Star \r\nThat parts the Red Sea darkness, \r\nThat makes us strangers at freedom's shore   \r\nArriving proud and chartless. \r\n  \r\nWoods are full of sounds tonight: \r\nEvery owl a hooded accuser, \r\nInvisible rivers galloping hot \r\nAre horses of bounty hunters. \r\n  \r\nBrothers, we were not called to birth \r\nTo live and die by starlight;\r\nCast into a cage, or worse,  \r\nWe were born to run tonight. \r\n  \r\nToward no stray star we climb, \r\nBut follow unhesitating \r\nThe northernmost that abides, \r\nIts steady fire not forsaking. \r\n\r\nBen, don't be the runaway horse  \r\nWho losing his way returns \r\nTo the master's gate perforce,\r\nHalf-tangled in his reins. \r\n\r\nYou won't find love awaits you,\r\nHarry, calm words and a patted snout, \r\nBut a whip and a hiss that you \r\nHad ever ventured out. \r\n  \r\nKeep the trail and keep your feet, \r\nThrough root and wreckage spur;  \r\nIf we lose our way we'll navigate \r\nBy the sturdy Northern Star. \r\n\r\nIt's one star that snaps our ropes,\r\nOne freedom that we chase,\r\nOne freedom's constellation trace \r\nIn footsteps of escape....\r\n  \r\nOnce past the Pennsylvania line \r\nWhere choirs of stars stare down,   \r\nThe jewel of all that shine     \r\nWill be our hallelujah crown!   \r\n  \r\nAnd there, as kings and queens we'll dance \r\nWho never dreamed of scepters-- \r\nBen and Harry, please, just this once \r\nFollow me, follow the North Star. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
GETTING TO GETTYSBURG<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe broken light, the shadows wide--\r\n  Behold the battle-field displayed! \r\n  God save the vanquished from the blade, \r\nThe victor from the victor's pride. \r\n     ~~Ambrose Bierce \r\n \r\n \r\n<\/em><\/pre>\n
The Rebel Belles<\/h2>\n

\nIf you knew my brother, I’m sure you would not fire upon<\/em> him.
\n~~A Warrington belle, down at the Green Hotel
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Southern girls circle floors in their hoops, \r\nRebel belles who obligingly dance, \r\nSlim fingers stoppered in ears \r\nWhen \"Battle Hymn\" music is heard. \r\n\r\nCaught in the crossfire of chance, \r\nDeftly circling floors in their hoops, \r\nThe rebel belles were ladies first \r\nWhen partisan cannonballs burst.   \r\n\r\nWhatever victory, whatever defeat, \r\nLove waltzes on pass after pass....\r\nDamsels circle floors in their hoops, \r\nTheir dancecards folded and neat.\r\n\r\nHeavily their families' hearses \r\nDriven with seven fine horses--\r\nIn defiance of death they dance, \r\nCircling worn floors in their hoops.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Quiet Man<\/h2>\n

\nAfterward, men could remember nothing more than the fact that when he came around things seemed to happen.
\n~~ Bruce Catton, Grant Moves South
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\"Well, he had a hard look, and soft way of talkin', is all.\" \r\n\"He weren't nothin', just a slouch hat and no rank 't'all.\" \r\n\"When old Colonel Souse was howled out of camp, Grant \r\nSauntered in with a shrug and said \u2018Guess I'll take command.'\"\r\n\"The fairgrounds were a fair place to preach and practice \r\nDiscipline: first, last and second place, as they say.\" \r\n\"Them Illinois farm boys was sweat into an army \r\nThat long summer, parading every sunset after \r\nDaylong drill and drill again, under a brunt sun.\" \r\n\"Springfield to Quincy is about a hundred miles \r\nFootsore marching.  But we'd be damned, if the gov'ment \r\nWanted to send us to war by freight car, we'd walk.\" \r\n\"And walk is just what that danged Grant had us do, \r\nWhistling to keep awake: Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel.\" \r\n\"Our feet taught us more than any Army Manual.\" \r\n\r\nYears later, in his memoirs, the quiet man explained: \r\n\"Give anyone, even a volunteer, a reason good enough \r\nAnd he'll follow you to hell, smooth as Aristotle; \r\nCommon soldiers are as smart as town folk, you bet.\" \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Night Drill<\/h2>\n

\n[He felt] strange in the presence of men who talked excitedly of a prospective battle…with nothing but eagerness and curiosity apparent in their faces. It was often that he suspected them to be liars.
\n~~Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Out of the old wood with whicker and stamp \r\nA soldier's horse escaping camp--  \r\n\u2018Coward!' cries the owl, the moon balloon-huge \r\nCaught in branches bare as a dirge. \r\n\r\nThe rider listens for the picket's hist \r\nThen taps his horse onward to grassy mist--  \r\nA burnt shadow moving in a cowl of milk, \r\nSteps soft-fallen as a kiss on silk. \r\n\r\nSoon enough, reeds arise and the river wakes, \r\nSilver manacles clasp the horse's shanks; \r\nThe far bank lifts a lover's face, \r\nHeart and foot find quickened pace. \r\n\r\nHorse and soldier race in moonlit circles, \r\nAn empty lasso whipping endless; \r\nFires from camp catch the deserter's eye, \r\nStars sunk in woods from a fallen sky. \r\n\r\nThe solider faces the remembered camp; \r\nHis halted horse shakes his reins and stamps. \r\nSlowly the river's cold molasses is recrossed. \r\n\"Who goes there?\" comes the picket's hist. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Another City Night<\/h2>\n

\nWhat hospital nurse has not a bone ring or trinket carved by her men in the ward?
\n~~Jane Woolsey, Hospital Days
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
He passed away with less than a whisper-- \r\nThat agony more than mortal finally \r\nRelieved.  The cap he kept at bedside here \r\nSo regiment friends would know more readily  \r\nTheir campmate \"swaddled like a darned baby,\" \r\nI place upon two hands I hold and cross: \r\nPerfect, white, elegant as a lady's; \r\nHands that kept his captain's charger glossy. \r\n\r\nI fold his last letter home, told through gauze, \r\nRead back aloud to get the humor right, \r\nImaging his mother's laugh, his father's brays. \r\n\r\nOutside has come another city night, \r\nCity lights granting summer air a haze--\r\nNot these tears, I swear, though I bite my lip. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Plank Bridge; or,
\nMajor Pelham’s Overnight Bridge<\/h2>\n

\nWe used to dance a great deal too. You didn’t get an idea of how strong he was until you danced with him–that was grand…. There wasn’t a single line of hardness in his face. It was all tenderness, as fresh and delicate as a boy’s….
\n~~Bessie Shackleford
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
SHE \r\nHis face is a splendid boy's alight on his bay, \r\nYouthful and edgeless, sun of a million rays. \r\nHE \r\nBetween our grey houses meander grey floods \r\nThat disfigure her shoes with grey Georgia mud. \r\nSHE \r\nSummer days are running, and I run all the more \r\nTo trouble the mud that lays wet at his door. \r\nHE THEN SHE \r\n\"Come dance in the parlor, come sing one more song.\"  \r\n\"Night rain is coming, and I soon must be gone.\"  \r\nHE \r\nSo I built a plank bridge, an oak rainbow of wood, \r\nThat her feet may stand spotless as Noah's doves stood. \r\nSHE \r\nAt dawn came a bugle, and grand cannon in town; \r\nI heard his bay racing as I reached for my gown--\r\nHE \r\nTo war, my horse, to war, now clamor the planks \r\nTo save all our dear ones, for whom we give thanks. \r\nSHE \r\nI saw him once more as he crossed his plank bridge:\r\nThrough his face in the coffin--a bullet's red ridge. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Master of the Monitor<\/h2>\n

\nAll my underclothes were perfectly black. I had been up so long, and under such a state of excitement…my nerves and muscles twitched as though electric shocks were continually passing through them. I laid down and tried to sleep–I might as well have tried to fly.
\n~~Dana Greene, executive officer
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
The ovoid deck is tidy, trim and flat, \r\nA shard of soul steamrolled for war \r\nAnd riveted to a central spar--\r\nThe turret's a kind of revolving hat. \r\n\r\nI am bound by iron as she is bound, \r\nHaving sworn lucre and limb and deed  \r\nObey what martial duty decrees \r\nAnd not the useless bright cry of the hounds. \r\n\r\nWith bit and whip and serrated spur\r\nI chased bloodhounds through columned trees\r\nChased patter of possum and fox and me\r\nIn the flying hours before the war.\r\n\r\nAt sea I'm less than a socketed eye, \r\nA man of gears and grinding oars  \r\nWho sees the world through slits, nor soars \r\nWhen he hears the useless bright cry of the hounds.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A Balloon on the Loose<\/h2>\n

\nan episode of the civil war <\/em><\/p>\n
It was a weird spectacle–that frail, fading oval gliding against the sky, floating in the serene azure, the little vessel swinging silently beneath, and a hundred thousand martial men watching… powerless to relieve or recover. We saw [Gen’l Fitz-John Porter, without a pilot]… no bigger than a child’s toy, clambering up the netting and reaching for the cord.
\n~~George Alfred Townsend, Campaigns of a Non-Combatant<\/p>\n
A balloon suddenly relieved of its gas will always form a half sphere, provided it has a sufficient distance to fall in, to condense a column of air under it. A thousand feet, I presume, would be sufficient.
\n~~Thaddeus Lowe, Chief Aeronaut, Union Army Balloon Corps<\/p>\n
In July when spiders fly swinging in their sacks, \r\nI go ballooning above the Rappahannock. \r\n\r\nI unsnare sandbag ballast and snag a cable. \r\nI swing beneath a ball, half-silver, dawdling. \r\n\r\nAt the mistaken snap of a rope, I go soaring. \r\nSoldiers look up to see myself unmooring\r\n\r\nInto snaffling clouds, webbed and horrible. \r\nTen thousand gasp like safety valves in mourning. \r\n\r\nI drift witnessed.  I cross opposing lines. \r\nRebel rifles pop and flower and flak the sky. \r\n\r\nBut I am a cloud, a cork, and unbridled I climb. \r\nEight-eyed and alone, I write and I spy. \r\n\r\nRichmond hills and Richmond men wave vividly   \r\nBeneath my rapping knuckles, mapped and tiny. \r\n\r\nThe town lays squared and gridded, a waffle. \r\nFront lines are scars in the grasses' ruffles. \r\n\r\nConfederates swarm like dots in a great restless etching \r\nOf a final edition still being written. \r\n\r\nWar draws two sides together in a pucker, \r\nThe last inch all shyness, each waiting for the other. \r\n\r\nAscent throws the ball into opposite winds, \r\nThe silken sack turns sulkily north now; now flattens. \r\n\r\nTen thousand gesture and lightly cry \"the valve!\" \r\nI spider the netting.  I trigger the latch. \r\n\r\nA white hissing goes up in hues of ovation. \r\nI land harsh, my chute torn open in nettles and thatch. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
One Unday in Shiloh<\/h2>\n

\nLord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.
\n~~Song of Deborah, Judges 5:4 <\/em><\/p>\n
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
\n~~Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem<\/p>\n
\r\nWe saw Shiloh church and marched to the bells. \r\nNothing was littler than that spire toward God. \r\nThe guns were thunder, and their fire was Hell. \r\n\r\nWas Sherman still sleeping when we came to call? \r\nPews were still warm in the April dawn's cold. \r\nWe saw Shiloh church and marched to the bells.\r\n\r\nThrough pasture and wood, that Sabbath appalled. \r\nWe whipped 'em in pieces to Hornet's Nest road. \r\nOur guns were thunder, and their fire was Hell. \r\n\r\nWe fought with their rifles, slept under their steeple, \r\nShadows ourselves after such loss of blood. \r\nWe saw Shiloh church and shots rang the bells. \r\n\r\n\"We'll lick 'em tomorrow,\" rose Grant's voice from a well, \r\nHis cigar pointing back where old Shiloh church stood. \r\nThe clouds were thunder, and their rain was Hell. \r\n\r\nThey came on at daybreak, backlit and fell. \r\nThey pressed their advantage, and we cursed our God.    \r\nWe ran from the churchyard whipped by the bells. \r\nTheir guns were thunder, and the fire was Hell. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Bread and Tears<\/h2>\n

\nUnion troops on the road to Gettysburg
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\r\nThe land rolled rich in Maryland \r\nGolden miles of unmolested grain \r\nA yeoman God had tilled and laid \r\nIn endless rows on endless plains. \r\nA farmer came with bales of bread:\r\nUndivided loaves, yeast-burst \r\nRisen crusts like handfuls of sun. \r\n     \"Walk up, boys, and get your rations! \r\n     Bread and tears, tears and bread.\" \r\n\r\nThe land seemed hurtless, hale and fed,\r\nCombers rolling gold and green\r\nTo feed them all in amassing peace \r\nTill time and tide and all were one.\r\nFarmer and wife stood upreared as trees\r\nOver the loaves' uneven crests,\r\nSoft bricks pugged and fired and fresh. \r\n     \"Walk up, boys, and get your rations! \r\n     Bread and tears, tears and bread.\" \r\n\r\nThe farmer's wife was an apple of sun,\r\nHad kneaded and kept the fire just so \r\nBefore the hours of night were done.\r\n\"Oh, boys, ye don't know what's before you!\r\nI fear there's many will be mangled soon-- \r\nLee's whole army is dead ahead \r\nAnd there'll be terrible fighting then.\" \r\n     \"Walk up, boys, and get your rations! \r\n     Bread and tears, tears and bread.\"  \r\n     \r\n     \r\n<\/pre>\n
Sharpshooter in Repose<\/h2>\n

\nThey couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.
\n~~Union General John Sedgwick just before being shot
\nby a sniper at Spotsylvania
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\r\nCornered in a coign of vantage, my eye is well \r\nHidden, dark as a crack in cold boulder rock--\r\nAlong my rolled rifle's endless track \r\nA lead ball bead sweats unshelled, \r\n\r\nAn angry star decanted into atmosphere \r\nAnd thrown into blood as into an ocean; \r\nIt stops the salt sump of a heart at once \r\nAgainst the edgeless engine of its sphere.  \r\n\r\nI'd played high among these old orange hills \r\nEndless days;  looked lazily out to dream, \r\nOr sip a cracked clay pipe of cornsilk crimson \r\nIn the shelter of summer hours spilled. \r\n\r\nThose boys I now knock down with thunder \r\nClimbed alien trees and sang in another school \r\nThat marched them down my hollow valley, all \r\nUnready to touch the lightning in my finger \r\n\r\nPinched in a small, steel trigger. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Unfolding Harper’s Weekly<\/h2>\n

\nThe Constitution of the Southern Confederacy has been published. It is a copy of the original Constitution of the United States, with some variations.
\n~~Harper’s Weekly, The Two Constitutions
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
No fool but thinks this fool war's a foil \r\nFor his private thought, grievance and toil \r\nOf thousands a canvas for his picaresque.\r\nOnly his tongue's motion gives his mind its rest. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Longfellow in His Study<\/h2>\n
Longfellow in his study, reading the \"terrible news\"\r\nPenned no epic about the mess, whose terror \r\nAnd error\r\nHe so intimately knew.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Rebel Yell<\/h2>\n

\nOthers live on in a careless and lukewarm state–not appearing to fill Longfellow’s measure: \u2018Into each life, some rain must fall.’
\n~~Mary Todd Lincoln
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
My Lank Abe stands commanding where coalblack shadows spar;\r\nHeavy Chaos covers us over, a blanket without stars--\r\nWar is folding over my heart, and over all my days;\r\nWar is wearing our beautiful country away.\r\nMen in thousands are marching, grey and shadowy,\r\nTheir roiling horses thundering, thundering from afar.\r\n\r\nAt silky midnight the medium returns, with crystal ball\r\nAnd long tin trumpet floating ghostly in the gaslit pall;\r\nAnd Willie's lisping voice buzzing there--to the life!\r\nEach dim word returns to my breast like a knife,\r\nEach dim dawn returns to the sound of the marchers' marshal fifes.\r\nThe coffin that carried my heart away was waxed and small.\r\n\r\nBattleside at noon in our folding chairs, we watch the long lines \r\nApproach and cross, blue and grey, threads on a loom divine;\r\nThreads red and mud soon enough, soon enough.\r\nAlways now my wronged, longing heart is crying out: enough!\r\nAlways it is Willie I see atop the high chargers, out riding in the rough;\r\nAlways I hear his hollow voice arising--in every Rebel yell.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Cherry Ripe<\/h2>\n

\nI will not be afraid of death and bane,
\nTill Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
\n~~Macbeth
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
At the head of the snake, song broke out:\r\n\"Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, ripe I cry\"\r\nAnd various haloos resounded, wry\r\nLaughs as fellas skedaddled about\r\nOver fieldstone walls, sniping cherries, pop\r\nPop pop back at men still marching,\r\nWhipping to hand sharp camp hatchets:\r\n\"Cherry chop, cherry chop;  chop, chop, chop.\" \r\n\r\nLoaded down limbs swung red minie-balls\r\nLike Christmas come to Dunsinane,\r\nAnd cherries flying and mouths open\r\nAnd a hail of wet spit pits over all!\r\nCherries for the officers riding without stop,\r\nCherries for the soldiers marching,\r\nSinging handy with their hatchets:\r\n\"Cherry chop, cherry chop;  chop, chop, chop.\"\r\n\r\nAntlered now, and merry, we descended\r\nBetween declivities of hills, ripe ripe\r\nRipe as the master sergeant's stripes,\r\nToward a valley town defended--\r\nTired ourselves of singing as we looped\r\nThe final little hill we rounded\r\nAnd their distant cannon sounded:\r\n\"Cherry chop, cherry chop;  chop, chop, chop.\" \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Night Ride
\n(Toward Gettysburg)<\/h2>\n

\nWhole regiments slept in the saddle, their faithful animals keeping the road unguided.
\n~~J.E.B. Stuart
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
At first the harness' small jangle-and-dangle and ease \r\nPlayed smooth music through the moody close wood; \r\nBut after the harsh rasp of moonless miles these \r\nMusics offended, an unrelenting irk-itch of sound. \r\n\r\nI pulled down my slouch cap, pulled up my coat collar, \r\nCrossed reins over pommel, lost worry to darkness, \r\nAnd let my horse follow what horse he would follow \r\nUntil turns turned again to blue moonlight through leaves. \r\n\r\nI dreamed when I dreamed of the slap-dash of the sea, \r\nRestless crests of the waves, the deepness of being. \r\nDolphin and merman, finned and webbed, we rode the sea's \r\nSymphony: not flying, not falling, just floating....\r\n\r\nA whinny of raindrops woke us much later, shook horse \r\nAnd rider out of their doze, mists raising fine steam \r\nFrom hillside's frail dawn, the clopped trail drawn loose--\r\nFirst from the forest, and last, mile by mile, from my dreams. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Midnight Ride of Abraham Lincoln; or,
\nThe Tale of the Two Old Abes<\/h2>\n

\nA nearly verbatim transcript made by his friend Ward Hill Lamon. The Oval Office, midnight
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
I have something to tell you, Ward! Lock the door.\r\nYou know I always thought you an idiot \r\nFit for a strait jacket for your apprehensions  \r\nOf my personal danger from assassination.  \r\nYou also know the way we skulked into this city\r\nIn the first place, has been a source of shame \r\nAnd regret to me, for it did look so cowardly!\r\nNow, I don't propose to make you my father-confessor \r\nOr acknowledge a change of heart, yet I am free  \r\nTo admit that just now I don't know what to think.... \r\nTonight, about 11 o'clock, I went out riding \r\nOld Abe, as you call him, to the Soldiers' Home  \r\nAlone, and when I returned to the foot of the hill  \r\nLeading back, I was just jogging along  \r\nAt a slow gait, immersed in deep thought,  \r\nContemplating what was next to happen  \r\nIn the unsettled state of current affairs,  \r\nWhen suddenly I was aroused--lifted, I may say  \r\nOut of my saddle as well as out of my wits--  \r\nBy the report of a rifle, and the gunner  \r\nNot fifty yards from where my contemplations  \r\nEnded, and my accelerated transit began.  \r\nMy erratic namesake, with little warning,  \r\nGave proof of decided dissatisfaction \r\nAt the racket, and with one reckless bound he\r\nUnceremoniously separated me from my eight-dollar plug-hat,  \r\nWithout any assent, expressed or implied,  \r\nOn my part.  At break-neck speed we soon  \r\nArrived in a haven of safety.  Meanwhile I was left  \r\nIn doubt as to whether death was more desirable  \r\nFrom being thrown from a runaway federal horse,  \r\nOr as the tragic result of a rifle-ball fired  \r\nBy a disloyal bushwhacker in the middle of the night.\r\nI tell you there's no time on record to equal that  \r\nMade by the two Old Abes on that occasion.  \r\nThe historic ride of John Gilpin, and Henry Wilson's  \r\nMemorable display of bareback equestrianship  \r\nOn a stray army mule from the scene of battle  \r\nAt Bull Run, a year ago, are nothing in comparison,  \r\nEither in point of time made or in ludicrous pageantry.  \r\nMy only advantage over these worthies was\r\nIn my having no observers.  I can truthfully say  \r\nThat one of the Abes was frightened on this occasion,  \r\nBut modesty forbids my mentioning which of us  \r\nIs entitled to that honor. This whole thing seems farcical.\r\nYet, here's the hat, and that's the hole!  No good  \r\nCan result at this time from giving it publicity. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Out on a Scout<\/h2>\n

\nLet’s slip out on a scout; I’ll ride your horse, and you can ride mine.
\n~~J.E.B. Stuart to his clerk, Eggleston
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
He was enamored of my horse \r\nAnd we rode, I supposed then, \r\nFor the pleasure of riding our course \r\nOn an animal which pleased him. \r\n\r\nAs stars were beginning to fade \r\nWe leaned in and had a race; \r\nThe war before us no more than a road, \r\nDanger a wind in our face. \r\n\r\nOur paces blurred pines as we passed \r\nBeyond the pickets' caution; \r\nWe rode into dawn at the last \r\nLike mist over the mountain. \r\n\r\nThe general gazed only forward, \r\nHis form like a balancing cat's; \r\nHe spoke to me as we sortied, \r\nHis unearthly voice detached: \r\n\r\n\"What are scouts who peer and run \r\nBut sparks thrown off a match? \r\nAnd battle lines little more than one \r\nSpark that happens to catch?\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Little Round Top<\/h2>\n

\nI have never returned to Emmitsburg, but it would astonish me very little to hear that the two armies had gone to Gettysburg to fight on account of the miracle performed by St. Joseph, intervening in favor of these pious damsels.
\n~~ Colonel Philippe Regis de Trobriand, remembering the
\nnuns of St. Joseph’s Convent of Emmitsburg, a few
\nmiles away from Gettysburg
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Ten thousand angels upon a pin \r\nWhirlwinded little \"Round Top\" whistling \r\nDeath by the minute fifteen decades ago\r\nWhere our placid picnic spreads its afternoon \r\nVisiting green Gettysburg again-- \r\nPickett's charge drawn inevitably up \r\nAs an anchor from the sleeping sea.... \r\nTen thousand angels in infernal clouds \r\nFlashed bayonets like wingtips in the smoke \r\nWhere I rummage for a final cigarette \r\nTo put our wine and sausages to bed, \r\nHistory re-folded neat as napkins in our basket.\r\nWe shotgun stale heels of bread-ends downhill\r\nTo the instant screech of skirling birds.\r\nThe knuckled minie ball you roll perhaps \r\nHad pinned some farm-boy soldier through the hand \r\nOr aced a captain's eye from its socket.... \r\nBut the lounging lemon clouds surrounding us\r\nShow nothing of the web in which we're stitched \r\nIn the skinned wind of the world.   \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Lee’s Retreat<\/h2>\n
Seventeen miles the badgered men \r\nBent greyly southward, beaten back-- \r\nAmbulance and stretcher burdened full \r\nPast Lee, who stood upon the track \r\nMurmuring those words like water: \r\n      \"You fought nobly, none better; \r\n       I'm sorry; the fault is mine for all.\"  \r\n\r\nGettysburg grew small, turned blue \r\nBehind them, cannonade and crack \r\nOf rifles silent as the hills; \r\nLetters home filled with the endless wreck  \r\nOf lives interred by slaughter: \r\n      \"You fought nobly, none better; \r\n       I'm sorry; the fault is mine for all.\"  \r\n\r\nLincoln's words had not yet arisen \r\nTo redeem the crisis, ruin and rack, \r\nTo give to men drowned red, who fell, \r\nSome rippled pulse of meaning back-- \r\nOnly those words that fell like water: \r\n      \"You fought nobly, none better; \r\n       I'm sorry; the fault is mine for all.\"  \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
IN MEDIAS RES<\/h2>\n

\nWhat’s dying but a second wind?
\n~~Yeats, Tom O’Roughley
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
In Medias Res<\/h2>\n
 A runner arrives at Lee’s side after the failure of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863 <\/em><\/p>\n
My heart is pinched, my eyes are dead \r\nWith great sweat as the battlefield shrinks \r\nLittler than this folding tabletop of maps. \r\nThe high ground's denied us, cemetery \r\nRidge and seminary ridge and the twin \r\nRoundtops bristling blue above our grey \r\nFog of men twisting listless in the valleys. \r\nLong the thought and long the march \r\nThat brought us raiding north through cherry \r\nLanes, and wheatfields rife with grain. \r\nTomorrow revolves the calendar round \r\nTo Independence Day, and we may yet \r\nSet new fireworks in American skies! \r\nThe lines of battle are a hash of graphs, \r\nAll our rebel arrows bending back \r\nLike fountain spouts to their hidden source. \r\nDefeat is a beginning too!  The hazard \r\nCast and failed returns the dice to hand.... \r\nChoking smokes boil gold with sunset, \r\nGod's driving rays divided and feebled \r\nAs troops of angels fall uncaught to Hell. \r\nWhip the stolen swine toward Richmond! \r\nVast patchworks of cattle low homeward, \r\nAnd endless bins of raided goods are gone \r\nDown south to clothe our bare necessity. \r\nWhat we've garnered here will keep us \r\nIn peaches through the wailing winter, \r\nAnd blot war office ledgers black.  Even \r\nJeff Davis' rail-thin visage will fatten \r\nBy the thickness of a smile when these \r\nLong columns are totaled and summed. \r\nPickett!  I see the charge I ordered, \r\nNoble and doomed, following your sword \r\nNo more than a glint above the tarry tide \r\nOf blood and men, and death and men. \r\nI thought surely--\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Lincoln<\/h2>\n
A long frock coat, a stovepipe hat\r\nStraight as a core of coal,\r\nA long black ribbon at the top,\r\nThe ax-drawn face hanging there\r\nAs if Old Testament prophets\r\nHad burned to a single stare.\r\n\r\n\tGhost to ghost, those shoving men\r\n\tPush heaven to the ground.\r\n\r\nGettysburg incurred a debt\r\nBlood's spontaneous blot put out;\r\nThat no wrong word, no marring phrase\r\nOr disjointed look would come\r\nHe held a vigil of long silence--\r\nAll the simpleness of a sum.\r\n\r\n\tGhost to ghost, those shoving men\r\n\tPush heaven to the ground.\r\n\r\nBecause the Union had grown sick,\r\nThat fine, long hand atrophied\r\nThat had put the British from the field\r\nAnd shovelled back the Styx,\r\nA single, revolutionary mind\r\nClacked truth from the burial bricks.\r\n\r\n\tGhost to ghost, those shoving men\r\n\tPush heaven to the ground.\r\n\r\n\"All men are created equal,\"\r\nA troubled voice had said it;\r\nCalm lightnings play the mortal storm\r\nWhere dead limbs had bled it.\r\nFlies flit and alight among the faces\r\nTorn by universal wishes.\r\n\r\n\tGhost to ghost, those shoving men\r\n\tPush heaven to the ground.  \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
VICKSBURG AND AFTER<\/h2>\n

\nWe’ll teach them dancing fine and neat
\nWith cannon, sword, and bayonet.
\n~~Dixie All Right
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
And the Master Runned Away<\/h2>\n
The scritch-scritch of the chickens \r\nIs just the same \r\nAs the scritch of chickens \r\nYesterday. \r\n\r\n\"Them Union tramps is tampin'  \r\nDown on Vi'kberg this very night,\"  \r\nOl' Master said, and sure enough \r\nDe thunder was a fright! \r\n\r\nHis fine buff travelin' hat \r\nSettin' on its peg \r\nWas gone when the moanin' come--  \r\nGuess ol' Master used his legs! \r\n\r\nSmoke and mist on the river \r\nBlow this way n' that; \r\nBut I never seen my master run \r\nTill his peg lost its hat. \r\n\r\nThe scritch-scritch of the chickens \r\nAin't the same \r\nAs the scritch of chickens \r\nYesterday. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
“I Am a Verb”<\/h2>\n

\nThe fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer.
\nI signify all three.
\n~~U.S. Grant
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
I am a verb. Wait, waiting, to wait. \r\nVicksburg terrifies me to my fingertips,  \r\nA sawmill blade set spinning to split  \r\nMe intemperately in two, if I \r\nCannot mollify this gnat impatience,  \r\nInvisible and ever-present against my skin. \r\nImpatience!  I hear the word only as a mad  \r\nImprecation against my rolling going on. \r\nWas McClellan's awful caution a virtue then?\r\nGod Himself could not command that man \r\nOut of his dithering, hither-and-thithering \r\nOf flying supplies, and men cemented \r\nTo their posts, shining boots to a pupil-sheen. \r\nAll the logic of supply is \"scarcity.\"  \r\nPile high the warehouse against the day \r\nBitter shots ring among the shoe-stuffed shelves-- \r\nLet epaulettes lie in golden ranks unearned; \r\nTons of bullets packed like peas for porridge; \r\nHeadless hats that wait in safety for the rain.... \r\nNot I, not I.  To live cossetted in a scabbard \r\nWhen war's molten lava is at the gate-- \r\nBoots!  The way this cold and slowing river  \r\nMeets us, mud and current to the knees, \r\nClaims our long boots with a loving suck \r\nAs my forward scrim of men attempt \r\nA snoring corner of Vicksburg's embankment. \r\nLook at the scene night and river give me: \r\nSixty-thousand Confederates stoppered-up \r\nIn walls as great as Troy's, cannons a lance \r\nOf steel to keep me back.  To wait, to watch, \r\nWhile each least imp of breeze implores the bell, \r\nRing!  Ring says the hammer to the anvil-- \r\nI the hammer, Vicksburg the only anvil. \r\nI am the fire, Vicksburg the limitless tinder! \r\nI the guillotine, Vicksburg the hapless head. \r\nI am a verb--\r\nThey also serve who can't stand to wait. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Cannon Are Ringing Out;
\nor, Melt the Bells<\/h2>\n

\nMelt the bells, melt the bells,
\n… transmute the evening chimes
\nInto war’s resounding rhymes
\n~~F.Y. Rockett, written when Gen’l Beauregard appealed
\nto Kentuckians to contribute bells to melt into cannon
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Bells, not bullets made of dullard stuff, \r\nBut bright metal hammered alive enough \r\nTo leave red forges quick with sound \r\nWhen lifted far enough from ground, \r\nWhen into belfries above choirs lifted. \r\n\r\nTo the cause, the cause, they fall conscripted, \r\nTorn from skies their songs had christened \r\nBy hands no longer paired in prayer \r\nTo deform their voices' joyful playing, \r\nTo bring their singing beings to the fire. \r\n\r\nBroken bells beaten new defend the town, \r\nIron echoes of their sounding rounds \r\nRing fire to the bloody ground, \r\nKeep every enemy at bay but time.\r\nTime remembers the silver lilt of chimes. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Morgan’s Great Raid<\/h2>\n

\nThose who swam with horses, unwilling to be laggard, not halting to dress, seized their cartridge boxes and guns and dashed upon the enemy. The strange sight of naked men engaging in combat amazed the enemy.
\n~~Bennett Young
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\r\nHoist Morgan on your shoulders, boys, \r\nAnd round the campfire drag him-- \r\nBragg orders us to stay, \r\nAnd today we disobey him. \r\nDrink to John Morgan and to Duke, \r\nDrink champagne from your boot! \r\n\r\nRain delayed us, picking daisies; \r\nTom Quick broke his right rein arm, \r\nSuch omens won't detain us. \r\nMorgan's raiders, swarm! \r\nDrink to John and drink to Duke, \r\nDrink champagne from your boot! \r\n\r\nWe break for Brandenburg \r\nTo ferry the swift Ohio river; \r\nSuch wild crossing's easy, urged \r\nBy Kentucky's blue defenders.  \r\nDrink to John and drink to Duke, \r\nDrink champagne from your boot! \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
2.<\/h2>\n

\nWe moved rapidly through six or seven towns without resistance, and tonight lie down for a little while with our bridles in our hands.
\n~~Bennett Young
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\r\nEllsworth, knot the telegraph lines \r\nWith false report and false surmise-- \r\nTo sit such fine horses is to ride \r\nStreaming dawn astride an arrow!\r\nBurn the bridges and pester flocks \r\nWhere hens pile eggs and barns are stocked;\r\nTrace Kentucky's hump through Ohio's wilds, \r\nAnd leave the rich fields fallow. \r\n\r\nGuard Indianapolis and Columbus, \r\nLike statues stand at empty doors. \r\nWe'll raid defenseless shores \r\nSubterfuge and guileless ruse \r\nHave left, like magic casements, open. \r\nOur fingers grow rings, and our saddles \r\nGo belled;  ham hangs from our bridles, \r\nWho on no kindnesses depend. \r\n\r\nDown Jackson streets in ladies veils \r\n(To defeat July and make it mild), \r\nWith cobalt bolts of stolen cloth \r\nAnd goods of equal lustre sail \r\nThe lightning regiments of death. \r\nWith railyards wrecked behind, and more \r\nDevastation on call before, \r\nThey strike with steel and stealth. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
3.<\/h2>\n

\nAs the red flames created by the great burning timbers rose skyward, they illumined the entire valley, and in the flickering shadows which they cast for several miles around… huge, weird forms….
\n~~Bennett Young
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Bridges burned before us, and bridges burned behind. \r\nMen asleep on horses, and the horses falling down. \r\nRivers, rivers, rivers, and the Ohio running high. \r\n\r\nThe chase is on in earnest that'd been but seek-and-hide. \r\nNo time to cook the stolen meat, or brush proud horses down. \r\nBridges burned before us, and bridges burned behind. \r\n\r\n\"Axes to the fore,\" the cry goes wide and high-- \r\nAnother narrow roadway, and every tree chopped down. \r\nRivers, rivers, rivers, and the Ohio running high. \r\n\r\nPot-shots from the farmers, their wives leave poisoned pies. \r\nMan and horse move hollow-eyed, and night and day are one. \r\nBridges burned before us, and bridges burned behind. \r\n\r\nThe brazen bugle's revellie blows ugly and unkind. \r\n\"Our last day in Ohio, men, in Virginny's our next town.\"  \r\nRivers, rivers, rivers, and the Ohio running high. \r\n\r\nAt last we're at the river;  all is black and we are blind. \r\nAre Union gunboats churning round Buffington Island now? \r\nBridges burned before us, and our bridges burned behind. \r\nRivers, rivers, rivers, and the Ohio running high. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Snowball Salute<\/h2>\n
Snow came with Christmas, filling the camp with quiet. \r\nSharpshooters trespassing skillful through the woods \r\nLicked snowflakes from their frozen sights and were silent. \r\nMorning began with coffee in the tin, and was good. \r\n\r\nHardtack, foraged fowl and a garnish of shucked peas \r\nDone with before our prayers were said, or thought of-- \r\nA dishrag of brownbread shining the plate with ease \r\nAs Major Anderson began to stir: \"Look smart, boys, look smart.\" \r\n\r\nHe marched us dizzy double-time, and we had a hunch: \r\nHere strutted a martinet in a polished boot, \r\nA ten-cent picture soldier not worth a punch-- \r\nTill Old Billy hatched a plan to ferret out the truth. \r\n\r\nMajor Anderson tiptoed tautly along the drawn line, \r\nHis beardless cheek shaved close as a new spring apple, \r\nHis black Maine hat as he passed, a target \"as fine \r\nAs it was tall,\" hissed Billy as he bent grinning to scrape \r\n\r\nA quick snowball from the scarves the night had left-- \r\nNot too powdery--and flicked it, and it burst and popped \r\nOff the major's hat with a hop, which his gloved hands caught \r\nBeneath a reddened face pursed and contemplative and soft. \r\n\r\nThen a staticy laugh cracked at the back of the group        \r\nAnd ran like lightning through a frozen pond, smiles \r\nUnzipping everywhere, laughter's thunder following up \r\nUntil even the major was laughing after a while. \r\n\r\nHis eyes glittered down the elated line: \"Atten-hut!\"  \r\nAnd all laughter clamped shut like a splint. \"Tell you men what-- \r\nI think you snow-ballers need a wee bit more target \r\nPractice. Y'un's nearly missed me! Bill, why'n't you paste your hat \r\n\r\nOn that fence post yonder.\"  Billy did the whipped-pup walk \r\nAnd carefully placed his brand new two-dollar Hardee hat \r\nAs we shouldered arms, watching him brush the black nap \r\nGoodbye. \"I suggest you men aim at the bugle crest.\" \r\n\r\nAnd we did as Major Anderson suggested, the whole troop. \r\nIn a minute, wasn't much post, let alone hat, left but scraps. \r\nMyself, I guess I clipped the bugle's loop.  As for the truth? \r\nWell, let's just say, after that day, Old Billy always \"looked sharp\" \r\n\r\nAnd snapped the first salute. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Jefferson Davis on His Sick Bed<\/h2>\n

\nYour letter found me in the depth of gloom… disasters have shrouded our cause.
\n~~Jefferson Davis, New Year’s Day 1862 <\/em><\/p>\n
It is the old story of the sick lion who even the jackal can kick without fear.
\n~~A Davis supporter<\/p>\n
Varina, here, hand the hissing stack of papers hither. \r\nI've more correspondence going out by pony to Bragg \r\nMired in Murfreesboro, his ranks fanged with vipers. \r\n\r\nThe Union's first retreat has mired and snagged, \r\nCasting black iron from the heights across Stones River \r\nTo spike and sink all hopes of once-boastful Bragg. \r\n\r\nWhatever else gets that gimlet man so hated, \r\nWhere he puts his screws they anchor and bite, \r\nKeeping thin timber to timber sturdily mated. \r\n\r\nTake this poltice of words for Polk, too.  May the sight \r\nOf it renew the sweetness of a friendship abated by\r\nDistance, and help him take Bragg's burrs more lightly. \r\n\r\nHow go the Cumberland roses we planted last spring? \r\nI have not been up once this week of days, helping \r\nDeepen earth, or prune to health the tender things. \r\n\r\nIf only Bragg's first telegram hadn't heralded victory! \r\nHow much more bitter the dregs, more dark the clouds \r\nHang on us now--those once blinding skies an effrontery \r\n\r\nTo this minute's remembrance of them!  Cry aloud, \r\nDear Varina, as I must make these inks crawl and cry, \r\nEach cold word drawn out to web the page in blood. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Harriet Tubman in Ecstasy<\/h2>\n

\nTubman underwent brain surgery in Boston’s Mass. Gen’l in 1898 to alleviate sleeplessness, pains and \u2018buzzing’ <\/em><\/p>\n
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
\n~~Emily Dickinson<\/p>\n
I'll bite my bullet, doc, if you but bite your tongue! \r\nI've seen a man in tearless pain grimace lead \r\nNearly in two while the surgeon took his leg. \r\nWhat served for his anesthesia will serve for me. \r\nMy brain cannot sleep, and all I've seen disables \r\nMy eyes from closing--visions and varieties \r\nOf reality beyond a mortal's power to name. \r\nI'll point and be silent before the throne of God. \r\nTake your knife and knowledge and carve \r\nA little darkness in my skull where sleep may dwell, \r\nAnd I curl there like a possum, too, at noon. \r\nAll my life I've had the sleeping fits, sleep \r\nSlipping under my eyelids day or night; \r\nAt least, since that overseer knocked a knot \r\nOf iron against my head when I wouldn't nab \r\nAugustus as he took to his heels in flight. \r\n\"Catch your own fish,\" I told him plain, and he \r\nAnswered plainly, too.  It wasn't too long after that \r\nThat visions came unbidden, green-edged \r\nAnd lively as a willow in a windstorm, \r\nA million ribbons breathing, beating, \r\nAnd on each a hidden meaning writ revealed. \r\nSome things are more than the thing they seem,\r\nSaid one.  A man's tongue will look more purple \r\nWhen he lies, inscribed upon another ribbon. \r\nOh!  I feel you now, the clapping clack of bone \r\nWhere the top of my head is coming off! \r\nOld brains, greet the very air! Pray you find \r\nYour cupful of oblivion again when sealed back in. \r\nSweet the cerebrations of ignorant sleep. \r\nThe surgeon touches a node of me, and I \r\nSmell candles.  I see the faces of my brothers \r\nAs I try and talk them North.  Follow me, \r\nBen and Harry, follow the North Star.  No matter \r\nThe miles, we'll find the rainbow's end, I've seen it. \r\nAnd now I see them turning back defeated, \r\nAnd feel myself turtle on, small and hard \r\nAs this sour bullet between my teeth. \r\nAgain and again the lighting divides my mind. \r\nEach strike emancipates a moonlit escapade. \r\nVaried and vivid the hands I held, traipsing \r\nThe underground railroad house to house \r\nTo Canada after the 1850 compromise that kept \r\nBlood off the streets a while, and my people \r\nStaked and abandoned in a Southern sun \r\nA decade past their liberation date!  Follow me, \r\nTo the green land above Mason-Dixon's line, sky \r\nA color unrecorded in the dreams of the unfree. \r\nAgain the finding knife intrudes, and another \r\nMemory rears searing--down the Combahee \r\nRiver we are raiding, those tall good soldiers, \r\nFaces dark like mine, solemn over Union blue, \r\nAnd I commanding, salvaging slaves by the boatload, \r\nUnrivaled behind-the-lines spies every one. \r\n\"Part the waters, Moses!\" I heard the babies cry. \r\nWomen running with a child at hip and little ones \r\nWorn round their necks like grain sacks. \r\nI still laugh to see that woman who slung a pig \r\nIn a bag, and led a second on a leash, black \r\nAnd white Beauregard and Jeff Davis as we \r\nNamed 'em on the creaky crowded steamer. \r\nHow those pigs did wrestle and cavort! \r\nOver 700 Gen'l Rufus counted. Over 700 saved \r\nAnd brought by creek and stream to Freedomland. \r\nA wind is running through me, surgeon, and \r\nA scalpel of wit unrolls the final writ of ribbon: \r\nWomen's suffrage, a voice and a vote. \r\nThat, I'll lend my life to, too, and gladly  \r\nEmancipate sister after sister to vote  \r\nThe Republican ticket, straight.  \"Listen folks,\"  \r\nI'd say, \"I freed thousands of slaves in my day,  \r\nAnd could have freed thousands more, to boot, \r\nIf only those poor souls had known that they  \r\nWere slaves.\"  Me and Susan B. can see all people \r\nShare essentialities from fingertips to spine. \r\nI'm sure you understand, my friend, who's held \r\nA battering human heart in the bareness \r\nOf your human hand. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Stars Above Tennessee; or,
\nThe Ragged Stars<\/h2>\n

\nI see the stars at bloody war
\n~~ Mad Tom’s Song
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Terror and courage and the rest \r\nArrive and don't tell why; \r\nTen thousand good men lost \r\nIn one toss of arms. \r\nTerrible the day today, and \r\nGraveyard night the same. \r\n\r\nIn the lee of a watery ditch \r\nBeset by sweat and worse, \r\nThe cavalryman unhorsed \r\nDrinks from the moon hitched \r\nAt his waist and sighs: \r\nMay tomorrow never come.\r\n\r\nMay night unroll forever\r\nIts ragged battle-flag;\r\nMay day and its great heat\r\nNever crease horizon's rim.\r\nRoll me up in your rag of stars,\r\nO night, cool and everlasting!\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Landing in the Crater<\/h2>\n

\nThe rich grain was standing high in the surrounding fields. The harvest was almost ripe, but the harvesters had fled.
\n~~Horace Porter, Grant’s aide during Petersburg siege <\/em><\/p>\n
It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.
\n~~Ulysses S. Grant<\/p>\n
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
\nOr close the wall up with our English dead.
\n~~ Henry V<\/p>\n
\"Go on in and see what the matter is.\"  \r\nSo the miner went, hunched, with a candle in his hat \r\nTracing the exhausted ash of a fuse, \r\nFacing extermination if a spark \r\nShould show ahead in the low-beamed tunnel. \r\nCould the fuse prepared have sputtered out? \r\nThe coughing candle showed a zone of hole, \r\nSoughing almost soundless in interred dark. \r\nAt last the tail of fuse, inertly unlit \r\nThat had paused the thousands set to attack \r\nTwisted back and forth in the miner's fingers \r\nInsisting a new length of fuse into place \r\nAnd rolling back two hundred feet to find \r\nColonel Pleasants rapping a pack of matchsticks \r\nAgainst his fidgeting thigh. \"Have at it, sir.\"  \r\nThist! went the matchstick and hist! went the fuse \r\nSparkling uneasily into the interior gloom. \r\n\r\nHark! An expectant stillness enfilades the field, \r\nA hush as was before the world was made, \r\nAnd us no more than cosmic dust, a breath \r\nUnbreathed, a nothingness from nothingness \r\nBequeathed.  So stood all on tiptoe in predawn \r\nDark, dawn herself but a secondhand's sweep away. \r\nSharp the intake of breath, a boiling pan, \r\nWhen every Union eye perceived the blast \r\n--Clean as a cutout from the now dawning sky-- \r\nA volcano of ruin moving like a freight train \r\nVoluminously upward, and lightnings \r\nVeined eyeball-like within it, roving painterly \r\nSpikes of angry orange throughout the mass \r\nGreat as a cathedral of spewed earth, \r\nGreat as an Iceland geyser filled with arms and legs \r\nAnd cannon bright as gilded toothpicks, \r\nSpinning compass needles gone to Hell. \r\n\r\n\"Forward!\" cried the sergeant, and the captain. \r\n\"Forward!\" cried the colonel, and the general too. \r\nAnd forward went the men into a crater \r\nFrowsey grey with endless dusts, till they \r\nWere grey themselves and looked half burnt-up, \r\nUnsure with every step they were not ghosts \r\nHovering above a pock-marked moonscape; \r\nAberrations of a living grave dug by fire,\r\nPoor soldiers caught in a whirlpool of flame\r\nOr Inferno's undertow;  walking dust\r\nIn a waste landscape of the unlabeled dead, \r\nOne face the same as the next in the end. \r\nThe crater unmanned the redan and left \r\nA scar, raw and bleak, between bewildered \r\nConfederates gawping gape-mouthed at dawn,\r\nUnsinging grey kingbirds as they clung\r\nTo the fractured walls they held, grey wings\r\nToward a screeching sky, flightless, lit up \r\nThemselves by sunrise, and sighted by \r\nThe busy shells of Union men bristling blue \r\nAlong their enemy redoubt, a hundred guns \r\nStrong, and just one hundred yards away. \r\n\r\n\"Thirty feet deep if an inch, I'd say. Thirty feet \r\nOf dirt and death, an open grave if we \r\nDon't mush on and take the little hill, that green \r\nMount behind the lines of all their battleworks\r\nHistory hasn't quite spiked full of tombstones\r\nAnd victory or defeat will paint white as bones--\r\nBlanford cemetery, an oasis in the air, \r\nPlain, with an easy excess of unturned grass,  \r\nStill filigreed with leafing trees, and a view \r\nFull-on of downtown Petersburg, street by \r\nStreet as if snapping a map.  And there we'll \r\nPoint directions out with artillery and bayonet \r\nEviscerating resistance from our crowned \r\nCrowsnest, our precipice of destruction.\" \r\nSo high officers prophesied and prayed, \r\nSo stood looking at the Crater's smoking gash \r\nFull of hope and silence-- \r\n\r\n                             But in the pit \r\nFools were standing, gulled and moored, not led, \r\nNot guided and inspired;  acres of riflemen \r\nWild to attack, but hamstrung on the leash \r\nIncompetence had necked them with, as if \r\nAn ominous noose had been laid out by fate. \r\nThe Crater was too deep to leap once entered. \r\nLater, many men were unburied here, chained \r\nAnd damned, if black, or doomed to Andersonville \r\nAnd blamed for war's forlorn continuance. \r\nBut here and now, all's a roar: confusion! \r\nShut from that happy pasture behind the lines, \r\nThousands churned in the gulping hole, cliffs \r\nOf sand surrounding them, drowning them-- \r\nTumult of guns, horrible faces half buried \r\nThroughout muddy waves of earthen wreckage. \r\nPeople, even here, in this hole, found heroes \r\nEqual to the horror, the hallelujah  \r\nOf brave souls rearing to their uppermost, \r\nDoves outspread against the shotgun's buckshot. \r\n\r\nTraverses, hidden trenches, a ruin of wood \r\nSpavined the Crater and men madly crept \r\nSheer walls to bear their muskets against \r\nFear-stuck foes in grey who, slow, reconvened  \r\nAt the precipitous lip, as at a pool  \r\nThat invited diving in, brimmed with blue. \r\nShot, and rocks, and mortar soon poured down, \r\nHot terror deboning the bluecoats' cool. \r\nOfficers shouted themselves hoarse, swinging swords, \r\nOffering themselves to the fire to upend \r\nThe soupbowl of soldiers and take the hill \r\n\"Up there!\" a quarter-mile, or less, green \r\nAnd trim, a haven like unto heaven then.\r\nWhen the colored troops marched the rim's flanks \r\n(At last released to fight who had trained first),\r\nFast and keeping good order in the maelstrom\r\nThey mustered at the Crater's far end \r\nAnd most of those below began to follow them \r\nHalfway to the graveyard, through sniper fire \r\nLaughing at their lateness to the task. \r\nTheir battering forward soon boomeranged--\r\nBare-knuckled though they fought, they failed.\r\nBack the black men tumbled to the cauldron, \r\nAttacked by an encircling scythe of grey\r\nThat stabbed them surrendering, or shivved \r\nLike crabs those who showed black backs to them.\r\nBlack regiments at their crest were halted;\r\nBack they were turned, one upon the other,\r\nUnsaved by fate, by luck;  returned they were,\r\nThe brave few following, all were returned--\r\nPushed, rushed into the pit, into the pit\r\nCrushed as waves by waves are crushed till only\r\nSeas are seen, are heard, one great clap of\r\nChaos, one being, one terrible discord. \r\n\r\nCarnage incontestable was occurring \r\nCartridge after cartridge in the Crater, \r\nYet not far off stood Colonel Pleasants, \r\nHip against the battery's small wall \r\nWorrying his watch fob in distracted thought \r\nSorry perhaps for having started it all\r\nListening to a fellow miner from Schuylkill \r\nListing how he'd \"Blow the damned fort up quick\" \r\nWith sufficient shaft and charge to do it. \r\nWith that, Colonel Pleasants surveyed the scene: \r\nBattlements like interlocking teeth faced  \r\nBattlements--a trench war grim and endless  \r\nChewing men and munitions to a cud, \r\nSwallowing all.  Was there a place these two \r\nFerocities touched, an incisor that he \r\nFearlessly could tug?  The engineer walked \r\nZigzags day and night with his theodolite  \r\nDigging practice shafts with bayonets, camp picks \r\nHammered to a miner's measure for deep \r\nUntrammeled work--it could be done, by God! \r\nHere as near as kissing came the eager walls, \r\nHere the slope would drain, the high ground be obtained \r\nIf but the enemy's pale fang was pulled, \r\nIf abatis and barbican were culled. \r\nWhy not begin in earnest, get the brass behind it?  \r\nThe way was plain as day, and today the day. \r\nSwiftly flew the work, there yawned the gap. \r\nWithout meaning to, the colonel's feet \r\nDanced a tango step, and the loop returned \r\nDancer and dance to face unpleasantness: \r\nThe boys were overwhelmed by bruising blows; \r\nThe soil was eating up the fellows now, \r\nConsuming what the firefight refused; \r\nOne son made a motion of obeisance \r\nAnd pulled a dead man from the mire, laid \r\nHand over hand in a crossed last rest. \r\nDamn all the generals who let them \r\nSlam forward only to teeter into the pit: \r\nDamn Ledlie, damn Burnside, damn Ferrero!\r\nDamn them, damn them, damn them, damn them! \r\nDamn all generals who conspire to kill \r\nAll men on every side for all of time: \r\nJolly devils who only long for death, \r\nDeath before them and death behind.      \r\n\r\nDeath was on the minds of men the night before, \r\nStitching names and regiments into their coats, \r\nSuch as who could.  The black troopers singing \r\nSongs belonging only to themselves, fires' \r\nLong shadows and tall light casting over all \r\nA beautiful and solemn mahogany, \r\nThe soulful sounds drawing awkward men \r\nTo quiet attentiveness to hear how goes \r\nThe spirit of men meant for the first push, \r\nMeant to lift up arms against oppressors \r\nWanton in their crimes.  How then sang these men? \r\nTheir voices lifted up as one vast organ \r\nChoice and melodious praising creation-- \r\nBitterness had no purchase in their souls, \r\nLittle cared how plantation days wore away \r\nSimple dignity with outrageous assault. \r\nCivilly they faced their final day, and sang: \r\n\r\nI know moonrise,\r\nI know star-rise--\r\n    Lay dis body down.\r\n\r\nI walk in de moonlight,\r\nI walk in de starlight--\r\n    Lay dis body down.\r\n\r\nMy soul and your soul\r\nWill meet again one day--\r\n    When I lay dis body down.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Peacemakers<\/h2>\n

\nOver the rebel parapet near the old mine crater came a white flag, with a bugler to blow a parley…. By the mysterious army grapevine, word went up and down the rival lines: the Confederacy was sending a peace commission to meet Lincoln….
\n~~ Bruce Carton, A Stillness at Appomattox <\/em><\/p>\n
We desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence.
\n~~Jefferson Davis<\/p>\n
Let us discuss securing peace to the people of one common country.
\n~~Abraham Lincoln<\/p>\n
Late came the day,\r\n                    and the sulky cattle lowing. \r\nLate the table laid,\r\n                    and late the peace-seeds sowing. \r\n\r\nThree men step across\r\n                   Southern battlements;\r\nThree men arrive,\r\n                   and Union lines must part.\r\n\r\nThree cheers arise,\r\n                   arise in ragged grey;\r\nAnd three hoarse cheers more\r\n                   in soiled blue reply.\r\n\r\nDown Hampton Roads\r\n                   a riverboat rolls waiting--\r\nLincoln's long shadow there\r\n                   in the picture window sitting.\r\n\r\nAnd last there came\r\n                   dovewhite ladies in a row.\r\nLate, late in the day,\r\n                   and the sulky cattle lowing.\r\n\r\nThree men gone away,\r\n                   and weeping ladies waving.\r\nLate, late in the day\r\n                   the peace-seeds sowing.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Mrs. Bickerdyke’s Battle;
\nor, Milk and Eggs<\/h2>\n

\nWhen one surgeon dared to ask where she received permission to do what she was doing, Bickerdyke retorted she was given orders by \u2018the Lord God Almighty. Have you anything that ranks higher than that?’
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Hospital days and hard tack, \r\nChalk milk and sour eggs \r\nWere the bane of Mrs. Bickerdyke \r\nMopping brows and counting legs. \r\n\r\nIn the Union's Memphis hospital \r\nEach sheet was straight and whole; \r\nQuick-attended was each man and boy \r\nUntil he died or rose. \r\n\r\n\"Milk and eggs, milk and eggs!\" \r\nCried every feeble mouth; \r\nBut milk and eggs could not be had \r\nIn the war-torn, war-poor South. \r\n\r\nMrs. Bickerdyke was small, was fierce, \r\nAnd had a soul of \u2018sterner stuff;'  \r\nWith iron spine, eyes clear of tears: \r\n\"We'll soon have enough.\" \r\n\r\nThe epauletted surgeons scoffed,\r\n\"Those enemy lines are garrote wire \r\nPulled tight at supply line necks.\" \r\nBut those who coughed knew well the while \r\n\r\nWho would fill their cups and plates: \r\n\"The milk will be as a river, \r\nThe eggs a flotilla upon it-- \r\nMrs. Bickerdyke will deliver!\" \r\n\r\nThrough the rifles of Johnny Reb \r\nHer tracks ran frail as lace; \r\nAt the slaughterhouse of Chicago \r\nMrs. Bickerdyke unveiled her case: \r\n\r\n\"Our blue men lay wounded, wanting \r\nNo more than milk and eggs; \r\nThrow wide your pantry doors, Chicago \r\nAnd give me what I beg!\" \r\n\r\nThirty days she was gone away \r\nTo siphon milk and gather eggs; \r\nOn the thirty-first her train arrived \r\nLowing, topped by cackling crates. \r\n\r\nMrs. Bickerdyke beamed, wreathed \r\nIn haloes of hissing steam: \r\n\"These are Union cows, boys, \r\nAnd loyal, abolitionist hens!\"\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Quiet at Camp<\/h2>\n

\nWithout music there would be no army.
\n~~Genl. Robt. E. Lee
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
The campfire throws faces, form after form: \r\nFaces adept at battle, or unready for the first charge \r\nRise and recede in the unsteady flame. \r\n\r\nNo time for thought when the lieutenant calls, \r\nWhen the barrage hails fate into your lap. \r\nAll's disarray;  endless disturbance of a waterfall. \r\n\r\nBut now the tents are pitched, the camp at peace; \r\nExhausted soldiers lie fallen in a snow of sleep, \r\nA calm rustled darkness of leaf on leaf. \r\n\r\nIndelible things have fallen to every boy and man: \r\nSins of ages a few torn years must mend--  \r\nShoulder-to-shoulder the blue, unready regiments stand. \r\n\r\nBut now no fife of patriots taunts the heart, \r\nAnd all the soft fire's lofty murmur is gathering in \r\nFace after face: angry, ecstatic, mute. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A Nest of Copperheads; or,
\nCapt. Hines Takes a Holiday<\/h2>\n

\nChicago graveyard. Democrat convention, 1864 <\/em><\/p>\n
Millions for defense; not a dollar or a man for aggressive and offensive civil war.
\n~~Clement Vallandigham, founder of the Copperheads<\/p>\n
[My escape with Morgan] owes something to the fact that I had just completed the reading of Victor Hugo’s “Les Mis\u00e9rables,” containing such vivid delineations of the wonderful escapes of Jean Valjean….
\n~~Capt. Thomas Hines, Confederate raider<\/p>\n
Close your eyes and swear the oath, Vallandigham, \r\nThe Peace-Knights of the Golden Circle need you. \r\nHand me that tracing paper, Beall, we've got \r\nAnother Democrat voter mouldering in his grave here, \r\nShrapnelled to smithereens at Antietam, looks like. \r\nRepeat after me, Clement, \"I hereby swear: surrender \r\nBefore war. Peace above prosperity, and the defeat \r\nOf Abraham Africanus above all!\"  Well done, now \r\nTake off that blindfold, here's charcoal and paper. \r\nI'll unfold a plot complete, my sixty stout \r\nConfederate conferees and me tidily devised \r\nLast month in Toronto.  We've arsenal enough \r\nFor Rock Island penitentiary and the six thousand \r\nGood men in grey snaffled harmless there. Six thousand! \r\nYou know I snaked John Morgan out of the Ohio Pen, \r\nWell, I'll charm this passel of greybacks free as well. \r\nJust keep listening and collect those votes for peace.\r\nCold feet, Clem?  Think what mighty shoes we'll fill\r\nAfter such long years of wearying, rearing war!\r\nCopperheads, don't those liberty pennies on your lapels \r\nMean anything in this degraded age?  I'll need \r\nFive hundred minuteman Chicagoans, any who \r\nAvoided Yankee service on principle will do. With them, \r\nMoonlight and luck, we'll have six thousand merry \r\nRaiders ripping up track and blowing up armories \r\nFrom Lake Michigan to the Mississippi in no time. \r\nHowdy-do, the Union will sure sue for peace then, \r\nMcClellan run into Washington on the peace plank \r\nVallandigham has penned with widows' tears, \r\nA bald eagle feather for a quill--all his hiss \r\nOf rights everlasting, rights to secede and breathe free. \r\nGather me those papers, Buell.  Here, hand over. \r\nLook at these new votes we've stacked nigh high \r\nAs a Gutenberg bible to swear a president in upon. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Sherman’s March to the Sea<\/h2>\n

\nSee here, [Gen’l] Cox, burn a few barns occasionally, as you go along. I can’t understand those signal flags, but I know what smoke means.
\n~~Wm. Tecumseh Sherman
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Sherman stalked the dining room,\r\nLush upon a high Atlanta hill; \r\nThe wallpaper, ornate and still, \r\nWrithed fire in the reflected gloom. \r\nBayonetted cotton floods the street \r\nWith pale, incandescent heat. \r\n\r\nShouted voices spread the news \r\nBut could not outrun the light \r\nFlicker-cast toward Georgia night \r\nOf his march's burning fuse. \r\nWhat shone revealed, what dread, what grace, \r\nIn each illuminated face? \r\n\r\nSherman strode the cold seashore \r\nAll night beneath starfire--\r\nHis hooded eyes a mystery \r\nHomeless, aimless, and alone. \r\nHe paused where firepale waters rushed, \r\nHeard his prayer, hissed, and did not rest. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Backward Flag<\/h2>\n

\n…a sudden figure, a man, raises himself…stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage…catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, recovers…
\n~~Whitman’s report of Lincoln’s assassination <\/em><\/p>\n
How I have loved the old flag, can never now be known.
\n~~John Wilkes Booth<\/p>\n
The flag curls over like a wave of the surf, \r\nOver its lines a cold fold of stars, enough \r\nTo show what sky can be when night is come: \r\nRed alive as rockets in the fabrics dim, \r\nWhite stripes welcome as oceans breaking home. \r\n\r\nCatch me by the heels who can, or catch me not at all. \r\n\r\nHow split, how hate-estranged we've grown, old flag, \r\nStripped of half your stars, your red stripes but rags \r\nTo bandage bloodied men or bury them--\r\nFife, drum, and solemn bell are all your music now. \r\nFlown, blown apart, we two, who once together flew. \r\n\r\nCatch me by the heels who can, or catch me not at all. \r\n\r\nI'll stitch myself into the national scene, \r\nRehearse my lines and look the part--I preen \r\nTo patch divided stripes and each stray star return. \r\nNothing but love, love alone bade me do this: \r\nFire, jump, and shout \u2018Sic semper tyrranis!' \r\n\r\nCatch me by the heels who can, or catch me not at all. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Mary Chesnut’s Diary<\/h2>\n

\nI do not write often now–not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?
\n~~ Mary Boykin Chesnut
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, \r\nSitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.\r\nLay aside, faithful pen, and write no more; \r\nRichmond is bleak as a cauldron of burnt teeth. \r\nI'll close my eyes awhile, and lie prone \r\nUntil some sweeter thought arises. I remember... \r\nThe canopied bridge to Mulberry, tree  \r\nAfter tree alive with yellow jessamine  \r\nAnd with cherokee rose writhing wild  \r\nOn post and pillar, as we rode to James'  \r\nFather's placid estate, Colonel Chesnut \r\nErect and spectacleless at eighty,  \r\nA fine speech on his lips about his visit  \r\nPreaching generosity and Jesus  \r\nDown at the Wateree Negro Mission. \r\n\"I preach to them as to my own, young James, \r\nOur prayers made knee by knee to God above.\"  \r\nWhen long life at last sent him onward, \r\nThe plantation rained with tears, and all \r\nWas lamentation and appreciation \r\nFor one who'd filled his cup of life with grace. \r\nOld Scipio was first among the pallbearers \r\nWho'd \"dressed him in life, and dressed him dead.\" \r\nAnd night came, and a soothing singing came  \r\nUp to the manse from the little slave cabins. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Pieces of the Old Battle Flag; or,
\nHoe-cake and Hominy on the Way Home<\/h2>\n

\nMy sisters that night made me underclothes from their skirts.
\n~~John T. Wickersham, in his homecoming narrative
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
A bugle broke night's silence as the colonel arrived,\r\nDrunk we thought, tilting on his stick-thin brindled mare;\r\n\"The war's done, boys. Head on home.\"  And in a few strides\r\n\r\nHe was gone himself.  Kelly had his knife, and then and there\r\nBegan to parcel out the battle flag which had never veered\r\nTo ground, although three good colorguards weren't spared.\r\n\r\nSome men wiped tears, some crept quiet from camp, hunched\r\nAs if unspined, but no one raised their voice to sing our anthem\r\nA final time, nor have I heard it since, that song which once\r\n\r\nMarched us from Missouri's shores to the vale of dread Antietam.\r\nWe soon enough were counted, and paroled to wander hence \r\nBarefoot to Memphis, or ride the Delta Darling steamboat down \r\n\r\nFrom the point of its departure. I rode until they threw me off, \r\nUnconscious on the docks of I knew not where, but not home. \r\nAlone and light-headed, I heard a colored woman close enough to scoff:\r\n\r\n \"Po' devil, and Sunday comin' too,\" who led me like a lamb \r\nAnd fed me hominy and cornbread--of her poor portion half \r\nUntil three weeks of days nursed me back to what I am: \r\n\r\nA sinner on the roadway with a hoe-cake in his hand. \r\n\"Honey, don't you go it, you'll for sure die if you do.\"  \r\n\"Ninety miles to the Missouri line, I must try it if I can.\" \r\n\r\nNot a barn was left standing, not a town unburned, no, \r\nNot a cow in any pasture, nor a white man in the land. \r\nNot a black man played the stranger, but gave me kindness, too; \r\n\r\nRough food to keep from fainting, sweet hands to bind my feet. \r\nSome went to hunt their masters, some heading for the North, \r\nEvery one of them my better, to my shame and my regret. \r\n\r\nOne night, near expiring, under the rainfall's gentle wrath \r\nI saw a lamp that beckoned me, deep in wood and sleet; \r\nOn hands and knees I made it, too weak to try the latch; \r\n\r\nWithin I heard them praying, a muffled forlorn grace, \r\nAnd put my ear the nearer who had not given thanks; \r\nWords, it seemed, imploring, to see their loved one's face \r\n\r\nLost to war's disorders when taken from their ranks.\r\nWith their prayer ended, I knocked and entered, felt the fireplace\r\nWarm me like a brandy that relieves the fever's shakes.\r\n\r\n\"Bacon and rye coffee,\" I heard.  \"This man is almost dead!\"\r\nThe voice was my own mother's, and my sisters circled near;\r\nFather, serving coffee, cried: \"Why, it's our own dear Ned!\"\r\n\r\nThey embraced me all in all their arms, shed relief-fed tears.\r\nThey bathed me in hot water, and closed up every wound.\r\nTo God I give my every thanks, who took away my fears.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
CONFEDERATE STATUES<\/h2>\n
In freedom's cause their voices raise, \r\nAnd burst the bonds of every slave; \r\nTill, north and south, and east and west, \r\nThe wounds we bear shall be redressed. \r\n     ~~ James M. Whitfield\r\n\r\n\r\nLet us cross over the river, and rest \r\nunder the shade of the trees.\r\n    ~~Stonewall Jackson\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Christmas Eve in Whitneyville<\/h2>\n

\nAn invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor.
\n~~Eli Whitney
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Easily a thousand times I'd touched a cuff, \r\nFlexed the luxury of a high thread count \r\nAnd dropped, as though left drowning in the surf, \r\nAn empty sleeve without a second thought. \r\n\r\nOnly now, in Whitneyville on a visit, \r\nPiling my cart with bales of breathable shirts, \r\nI think about the town's history, how it's stitched\r\nDay to day in time's continental drift. \r\n\r\nHow, quick as a cat, Eli's nimble gin \r\nClawed free a thread, crystalline from end to end, \r\nAnd that thread reached out across lost time \r\nTo wind me in these sheets for bed....  \r\n\r\nDid Eli know his cotton gin would bring \r\nUs here together among the shining aisles-- \r\nHe and I, and Southern slavers in a ring? \r\nAnd, by their rings, black slaves in lowly file? \r\n\r\nI dream of fields of cotton, brown and white, \r\nAnd dusky figures bending in a singing row, \r\nAnd colored sunset moving on toward night \r\nWhere only sleeping darkness is allowed. \r\n\r\nI lie alone among the cotton clouds, \r\nDrifting in the droning surf of central air, \r\nMy sleeves lifeless as my premie shroud. \r\nI hear my heavy breathing claw the air. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Reviving the Wreck; or,
\nThe Raising of the Monitor<\/h2>\n

\nIt was like finding a palace, with all its conveniences, under the sea.
\n~~Nathaniel Hawthorne
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
The sea is full of sobbing \r\nYet into the sea we go, \r\nTo find that historical darling \r\nA tin ship from long ago. \r\n\r\nWe fight (as they fought, perhaps, \r\nWho unlimbered cannon and tracked \r\nThe foe) who (amid salvage and scrap) \r\nWrestle seaweed and wrecks. \r\n\r\nWith mask and fin descending, \r\nWe delve disguised to the depths\r\nTo uncharm the storm's spellbinding \r\nUpending you to death. \r\n\r\nHere's the Monitor that made such noise  \r\nHarassing Merrimac on the James;\r\nIt lists in a funk of silt and weeds, \r\nRusted, contrite, and tame. \r\n\r\nHistory's filigree of detail, \r\nIts palimpsest of scribbled layers,\r\nShows stripes of filtered light mottling\r\nA hulk abandoned by prayer. \r\n\r\nThe darkness of Hatteras' stream\r\nWe pierce without wit or pity, \r\nAnd the glance of our trifling beams \r\nReveals a sunken city. \r\n\r\nHere glimmers a little Manhattan,\r\nThe keel quaint 6th Avenue\r\nWith Wahoo and Bluefin pedestrians,\r\nThe whole glozed over in roux. \r\n\r\nAll war and the waging of it \r\nMust come to this they say--\r\nTwo skeletons in an inverted turret \r\nWhere minnows are wont to play. \r\n\r\nFor weeks we belt and balloon and inflate \r\nTo heave the iron whale by inches \r\nFrom the heaviness of its fate; \r\nYet in my chest, a rebellious fish \r\n\r\nQuivers with questions and guesses: \r\nTo itch at the layers of mystery, \r\nTo reveal in detail what had been messy, \r\nMay change what was of history.\r\n\r\nTo scrape through the dark unknown \r\nWith an arrow of light forlorn,\r\nWith new instruments of our own.... \r\nWould we survive such inspection? \r\n\r\nLet Davy Jones entertain his guests,\r\nLet leviathan still swallow Jonah,\r\nLet Eve's innocence stay lost,\r\nAnd disturb not Shakespeare's bones.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
In the Field of Lost Shoes<\/h2>\n

\nThey faltered not, but kept the line.
\n~~About the adolescent VMI cadets who marched through heavy mud, losing their shoes as they advanced on the enemy at New Market
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
We planted palm-sized flags in uncounted rows \r\nAs wind taunted them taut-- \r\nThe colors almost gone to watercolor now \r\nWinter's passed and spring pants. \r\n\r\nThe field still marshals blue and grey, although \r\nThe skirmish lines are lost....  \r\nWhere wildflower and meadowgrass grow long \r\nMemory simplifies to mist. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Confederate Statues<\/h2>\n

\nDraw the sword and throw away the scabbard!
\n~~Stonewall Jackson
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
To stand and stand and stand \r\nWhen every knee would fawn; \r\nTo be a statue, resolute, \r\nThat greets the pinkening dawn. \r\n\r\nNo more can one man master \r\nThan his own traitorous feet; \r\nNo more's expected, wanted, \r\nThan refusal to retreat. \r\n\r\nSo Stonewall stood, and stands \r\nGranite and complete; \r\nEach fieldstone laid by careful hand: \r\nDuty, honor, brave intent. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Lee’s Return<\/h2>\n
When sullied world is gone, or rent\r\nHidden meanings like hidden ghosts arise.\r\nThat Lee might live the thought fidelity,\r\nTo defeat or victory indifferent,\r\nA world's measure of gain and loss\r\nLies in his sword's ceremonial cross.\r\n\r\n\tO nothing but a passion burns\r\n\tMourned countries to their soot.\r\n\r\nSpotless Appomattox first and last,\r\nLee's ruinous duty, and after\r\nKent's canon that shook the stocks,\r\nWho served a sane, distracted Lear\r\nBecause he knew a royal soul was one \r\nHuman before humanity had come.\r\n\r\n\tLong, long lay the shadows on the grass;\r\n\tUniformed men flit and pass.\r\n\r\nHow many of the undiscerning multitude\r\nWhen Lee passed there had thought\r\nHis great grey face all gravity,\r\nStone blossom of a moral root.\r\nWhat first might drive a man\r\nTo live an abstract thought?\r\n\r\n\t O nothing but a passion burns\r\n\t Mourned countries to their soot.\r\n\r\nCourthouse shadows judge the field\r\nWhere Lee both tried and failed;\r\nA lonely, exalted thought that still\r\nDrives restless as a nail.\r\nO How had Athens come and gone\r\nWithout one such man?\r\n\r\n\t Long, long lay the shadows on the grass;\r\n\t Uniformed men flit and pass.\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Some books I read while writing<\/h2>\n

\nThere’s a million books out there about the American Civil War. This is one of the facts that daunts, rather than tempts, the fidelity-minded contemporary writer. Some of the books I treasured, and mauled, the most during my journey through these sparse traces of poems are listed below. Of special note, to me, were the compendiums of contemporary accounts, tales and folklore (B. A. Botkin), or books that threaded a narrative together mainly through excerpts from eyewitness accounts, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and official battle reports (Eisendchiml and Newman, Commager). I also enjoyed the robust and well-known popular history narratives of the war that use such accounts to bring their retellings to life (Catton, Foote, McPherson, Brown). You won’t regret picking up any of the titles below in addition to (or instead of) the little poetry book in your hands.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Civil War Treasury, B. A. Botkin \r\nCivil War, San American Iliad, Eisendchiml and Newman \r\nThe Blue and the Grey, Henry Steele Commager \r\nBruce Catton's Civil War \r\nShelby Foote Civil War Trilogy \r\nPatriotic Gore, Edmund Wilson \r\nVicksburg 1863, Winston Groom \r\nBattle Cry of Freedom, James Mcpherson \r\nGettysburg, Noah Trudeau \r\nLife of Johnny Reb and Life of Billy Yank, Wiley \r\nWar Stories, Ambrose Bierce \r\nWords For the Hour, poetry, Barret and Miller \r\nPoets of the Civil War, J. D. Mcclatchy \r\nEmbattled Rebel and Tried by War, James Mcpherson \r\nEmbattled Courage, Gerald Linderman \r\nIronclad, Paul Clancy \r\nThe Battle of the Crater, Charles River Editions \r\nSherman's March, Burke Davis \r\nDee Brown's Three Main Civil War Books \r\nLandscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears \r\nDon't Know Much About the Civil War, Kenneth Davis \r\n\r\nAny book by Douglas Southall Freeman \r\n<\/pre>\n
Helps to keep a good battle atlas at your elbow, rather than internet maps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let us! my dear friend, console ourselves for the unsuccessful efforts of our lives to serve our fellow creatures by recollecting that we have aimed well. ~~Dr. Benj. Rush to John Adams about the day they signed the Decl. of Ind. Battle Lines Nor cringe if come the night: Walk through the cloud to meet […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1747],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncivil-hours","category-1747-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7290,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620\/revisions\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}