Vicksburg
by
Mike Gallimore
(Age: 58)
copyright 02-27-2008
Age Rating: 13 to 127
We mustered in down at Madison in the fall of sixty-one –
I left behind my wooden plow for a blanket and a gun.
I thought I owed an unpaid debt to those who went before;
so I left my sweet Wisconsin home, and joined Abe Lincoln’s war.
Soldiering was staying dry, and trying to keep fed –
we never had enough to eat, and I was always wet.
From time to time we’d fire our guns, and then we’d lay ‘em down.
My nineteenth birthday came and went in a muddy river town.
A farmer’s son is what I was before I joined the war;
my daddy told me, know for sure what you’re fighting for.
I’d never been away from home or seen a colored man;
the day I saw my best friend die, I tried to understand.
We crossed the Big Black River in the spring of sixty-three;
the Johnnies burned the bridges out, and cut down all the trees.
The engineers repaired it all and got us boys across;
we walked the tracks to Vicksburg, all mindful of the cost.
We took the town of Vicksburg in a long and painful siege –
forty days of shelling drove the city to her knees.
Babies cried and families died; we choked off their supply.
The rebels finally gave her up on the fourth day of July.
The war was over years ago; it’s a brand new century;
I can’t forget that southern town, or what it meant to me.
The rebels fought us tooth and nail, and knew they could not win;
now Vicksburg’s just a memory, and we’re all Americans.
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How rhythmically you have recounted the battle of Vicksburg from the viewpoint of a young soldier. I am attracted to poems that tell stories and especially when they have a distinct meter and rhyme. I noticed that some of your rhymes are not perfect which gives the whole a welcome break. There were innumerable hardships and heavy costs during our civil war, but I'm glad we are united.......Very nice.....June
I have described myself to others not as a history buff, but as a history fanatic. Vicksburg is a name that I think on with wonder, as is Gettysburg, Fredricksburg, or Cold Harbor.
The most important thing about your poem is the attempt to explain why, in Heaven's name, a Wisconsin farm boy would pick his stakes and risk his life on Abe Lincoln's war. It is the most fundamental question we in this time must ask of such distant events.
Some would argue that it was because the war was not about slavery. Frankly, that's nonsense. It was both the proximate and final cause of the war. I have my own very strong opinions on the matter, movies like Gettysburg, Gods and Generals, Cold Mountain over even the dreadful Gone with the Wind, notwithstanding.
But the willingness to grapple and versify about that is the strongest thing about your fine poem.
Welcome !
