There he stands under the shade of trees. There he stands like a stonewall.
With Virginia and God, stands the gray knight. There stands old Blue Light.
There he stands, chief of the foot cavalry. Where there was once a battle cry, there is now but a softened sigh.
Old Blue light, you wore the South’s pride like robes of rare. Old Blue light, you fought with the South like the bulliest of bulls.
Old Blue light, The South cries for you.
Your life has faded like a star absorbed by a full moon's flashing ray.
Though your cause has died, may it live and last like your warrior's soul. Let there always be a stonewall under the shade of trees, sound in fame's sunny rays.
May your old blue light shine through defeat's darkest days.
-Zacharias

It was his army, an army of God.
His stonewall, ragged and gray.
They were his braves, the bare foot cavalry.
Through the wilderness they marched
like the children of Egypt.
A wilderness of pine
and bramble rather than sand and stone.
How swiftly they marched,
toward a promise-land of their own.
The promise of victory.
Sons of the South, fathers of a new country,
followed an old blue light.
There were thousands of souls
like thousands of stones
chiseled and seasoned by a season of storms.
Like a stonewall they did not break.
Into the back and belly of the luckless foe, this stonewall sailed.
Never before could one beat three.
Yet there was little David and his little sling.
And there was Jackson and his little army.
Though all the odds and gods were against them,
they had the protection of their one mighty God.
So by a sling and David's faith, a giant fell.
By the fury of a rebel charge and Jackson's faith,
a giant flew.
When the light of victory shown
through the storm that he led
our Jackson would soon lay dead.
He is gone though the
old blue light never fades.
He crossed over the River Jordan
and now rests under the shade of trees.
Over the river our leader led to a promise land.
A promise of victory and land of peace.
Guarded along its shores
by a stonewall, ragged and gray.
-Zac
(Dedicated to the memory of Stonewall Jackson and his men who on May 2, 1863 gained a against a foe more than three times their size.)

Upon a field turned to battlefield near a town turned to legend called Manassas.
I breath a gun's smoke as thick and sweet as molasses.
This new uniform of gray keeps me warm on this hot July day.
How tattered will it be from shot and shell if I shall die before this hot July's night?
The sun bleeds red and weeps tears of scarlet too as it lays upon the sky o're this fight.
Through these scorched, I see through the falling fire another yankee die.
Silenced by the madness of screaming shells, I could not hear the soldier cry.
With cold feelings I point this hot rifle Northward aiming for the Northerners.
Let this shot be lucky and end the invader upon the soil that he dared to invade.
Flags and men tilt, waver, and fall but upon these plains flags and men stand like a stonewall.
The invaders yield their bloody path of conquest as the bleeding and dying sun begins to sink into the West.

The enemy is gone.
The cannon are limbered.
Our rifles are stacked.
The burying begins.
Chaplains hover round the fallen, asking that God forgive their sins.
God was with His sons that wore the gray when at Manassas we held the invaders at bay.
I have lived to see this hot Virginia night.
But the day will come again when upon another soil we shall send the enemy into another hurried flight.

“Private Tims, ” an officer of D Company called to a small soldier who slumbered under a ragged kepi.
“Eyes up man! Tonight we shall sleep upon the streets of Nashville!” Without waiting for an answer, the officer tramped through the mud and repeated the boast to another sleeping soldier. Yet, the boasts scattered into the wind like a pack of autumn leaves. A December's angry wind was blowing from the North, where Yankees readied…in Nashville. The officer continued down the line as if his words alone would bring victory to a broken army.
The Confederate entrenchment's coiled a mile or so south of the city of Nashville, Tennessee. It was December 16, 1864. The “Corn-fed” Army of Tennessee was made of old men and young boys, all veterans now. They came from all over the South, gathering once again to give the yankees hell, and unleash the rebel yell. Yet, these sons of Dixie had little breath left in them to deliver the sacred yell.
Private James K. Polk Tims awoke to the grim rumble of cannon sounding on the far right of the Confederate line.
The distant volleys thudded against the Tennessee Heavens. Somebody's catching hell, he thought and grimaced. He was tired. Plucking his tuff of beard, Tims examined the lean men in his unit. The “Enterprise Tigers” of D company which was a part of the 37th Mississippi was just a mere skeleton of what it had been at the start of the campaign. Oh, but how they were tigers on every field of judgment.
The Army of Tennessee, including the 37th Mississippi, had advanced north through Tennessee from the defeat at Atlanta. Marching from the killing lands of Franklin, the proud host of Southern independence crawled forward ever still.
They now stood, hallowed eyed at the gates of Nashville. So many dreams had bled away during the hush of each long march. The veterans looked to the past for comfort. No longer did they vision a free and independent South to raise their families in. Happiness was the remembrance of of a time when those dreams existed. Home lands like the Mississippi Delta awaited them there. The scarlet curves of the Red River, or the misquote tree pastures waited too in the folds of their memories. It was the guns and death though, that awaited them today. The call of the bugle and not the song of the whipper-will would sound across the plain. They had all delivered the cold steel and bled for the Southern cause. They would bleed some more.
Tims sat on the edge of the breast works sucking on army issued corn, which ground against his teeth like gravel. He rubbed his long fingers down his ribs, which were so rigid they could be used as a wash board. He painfully swallowed the army stuff. “It works, it really does,” Tims said to himself and spat. Tims was an Alabamian by birth, raised in Choctaw County.
His three brothers were further down the trench. John was sewing a patch onto his coat. On the night before the battle of Franklin, a stray ember from the camp fire had burnt a hole clean through. James thanked God that it the hole was not caused by a yankee bead. But even so, John sat cursing the cheap thread rather than imagining what might of been. Jackson sat against the earthen wall playing cards as Oliver read his Bible. Every few moments Oliver would cast a reproachful glance at his gambling brother.
The four brothers had went to the nearest recruiting station in what seemed like ten life times ago to Eneterprise, Mississippi. They were given gray coats with shining state buttons. Those buttons didn't shine any more, and after only one year, James went from Sixteen to sixty.
He peered north toward the twisting lines of Union troops. Strangers, he though as he spied a distant flag from Minnesota unfurling upon the Tennessee wind. Most of his comrades sharing the trench with him had been neighbors. They had hunted, gone to school with, and courted girls from each other's families. Their weary eyes looked down the line toward the right, where the distant hum of battle carried the sound of splintering wood. The neighbors were joined in this business. It was the business of killing the strangers.
“Deo Vindice,” he whispered the Confederate national motto. He liked the sound of it. God will Vindicate, James was sobered by its meaning.
“Almighty”, he gasped, watching the Minnesota, and other Union banners tilt forward above an endless line of men in blue charging at the double time toward his position. As if a great curtain had been lifted upon the plains, thousands of glistening bayonets and men in strait files burst through the patchy fog. Their rifles snapped forward and unleashed a wavering curtain of flame and mini balls. Cannon shells arched across the sky, looking like fiery threads pulled from the fabrics of hell. All around James, his neighbors twisted and fell into the muddy trench.
James ran down the trench line in a frantic search for his brothers. All he found was a bible laying in the mud with scattered playing cards. He rammed a charge home and aimed it at the blue ranks. As he fired the blue ranks became a blur of white smoke. Like a machine, he swung his ramrod over his shoulder and rammed the charges one after the other into the rifle. He fired at the blue blurs rushing in front of him. James, with his eyes caked with powder and tears did not notice the Union troops sweeping around him.
“Surrender, johnny”! James looked up from his scorching barrel as if awoken from a trance. A grizzly size yankee stood before him and pressed his fat palms down upon James' shoulders. The small man twisted away and plowed the stock of his rifle into the yankee’s flank and watched him howl with pain. Suddenly a ball of light dazzled with fury out of the gray sky and plowed into Tims’ body. He lay pinned down while a dozen Yankees threw themselves on to him. Tims clenched his teeth and looked through the swirling blue mass.
His neighbors lay dead, the army lay dead, and he was so far from home. He tried to look away. Deo Vindice. Alas, there was so little left for the Almighty to vindicate. Tims finally gave up his fit under the mob of Yankees. He buried his big hands into his face and sobbed.
As the storm curled around the land, the rebel yell rose into one last and desperate pitch. In defiance, the Confederate army's last battle cry choked and wavered against the surging tide. Then it was swept away forever. It buried itself into the past, leaving nothing behind but a whimper. It was the death of a dream. Oh what a glorious cause! Lost all the same. Lost with what was left of the Army of Tennessee under the “gallant” General Hood, as they began to retreat southward, back home.
The Yankees took James and his brothers northward. For them the Great War was over.
James Tims would stand-alone on a Texas farm many years after the war and stare at the emptiness around him. No lanes of tents, no city of campfires, just peace. In that silence and passing of the day sounded a song from a whipper-will. It was the bugles calling again.
God will surly vindicate.
author's note: Thanks to my Mother who contributed her quote to this story, "Oh what a glorious cause! Lost all the same."

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