Here’s a good poem  of the War Between the States, written by a good friend in the Nicholson (Ruston) SCV camp:

Call to Arms

As my eyes survey the haunting landscape set before me, my ears give a hearing to the late, ancestral cries for freedom. Cries to be liberated, cries for emancipation, and a cry for exemption from the absolution of the oppressive powers that bound once free men.

A whole world interrupted. I see men lying in pools of blood. Their dying words still give cry even today in the hearts of Southerners alike. Deo Vindice! Deo Vindice! It is that blood-drenched soil that gives life to every living, breathing thing birthed from this our native “Dixie.”

“Look there, do you see? Do you see the rebel soldier in his tattered vestments?” His battle-bruised body tired and weary from his seemingly endless journey. Yet victory is the life-blood that fuels his inner man. He can smell it, he can taste it, it is the task that has been set before him.

The sound of the cannons roar past me as I close my eyes for a moment. Johnny Reb falls at my right, he falls at my left, all around me the ghosts of my forefathers once again fall to the lot of their final resting places. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I remind myself that this grassland is sacred, as I gently step.

Step- over hundreds of lives. Lost to a cause that is dying. The same cause that gave birth to pride. A whole world that wanted only to exist in itself. In the boundless rows of cotton fields,  in the alleyways of the towering Oak trees, and in the life-giving blood that pumped through the veins of every man, woman and child “Dixie” called her own.

I hear a different sound now. Reverberating through the honeysuckle, through the magnolias, and down through the corridors of time. It is “Dixie.” Rendering certain that she now cradles our lost loved ones in the warmth of her fertile, blood bought soil.

It is the sweet sound of “Dixie” that they will forever hear. Resounding in the breeze that blows through the moss in the trees, and down through the hallways of every grand plantation still standing proud in all her glory! For she bore the backbone of this wonderful land; the Southern people.

Let us never forget those whose lives were short-lived. Sacrificed. Lives given for this rich heritage that still runs through my veins, your veins. We are one; you know, me, you, and Johnny Reb? Listen for a moment- to the rebel yell. Can’t you hear it? Loud above all else! May it forever lead us into battle! God bless Dixie!

Here’s a photo of Jody McMaster, the poet.

Jody McMaster