https://allpoetry.com/Conscientious-Objector

This piece is an acknowledged lesser masterpiece. On the basis of the two smash lines alone it requires this designation. Otherwise it is good, somewhat derivative but essentially influenced rather. It’s brevity detracts nearly nothing and in fact reads of the last stage rationing of the period, The photo re-enforces the paucity of energy that could be devoted to chronicling the period. The worst difficulty is that it was no hero to moan of the ridiculous waste of that war, in fact the interleaving lines “how could we EVER have been so stupid” are there because they were everywhere in the accounts of the age.

This is NOT like our war, The Northern taking of the Southern wealth that led to the bloodletting to the last draw on the part of the North was because it could NOT lose and survive. That would have been it’s end. There were repeated and terrifyingly more strident overtures from the South “Bespoke Yourselves, Bretherin, Cease this if only for a Parley” but the North could not. If those deaths had gone unanswered, and that was a part of the problem but not the whole, the French Revolution would have re-occured on an even Grander Scale and they ALL knew it. Lincoln was DESPISED by the command but obeyed genuflectively out of a sense not of personal but cultural survival. Yeah, when the impossible happened and the South surrendered unconditionally Lincoln lived for a few hours in a ephemeral euphoria that OF COURSE included a visit to the holy land, and then they let Booth shoot ’em.