THE ROAD TO SUMTER

by Alfred D. Byrd

	When in the course of events that brought forth in this land a new nation,

Ultimate law for its states was enshrined in that land's constitution,

Slavery's legalness sundered that land into disparate portions

Destined to suffer the conflict of brothers arrayed against brothers.

Northward, a region of farmers who worked with their hands their own holdings,

Of miners wresting from mountains the coal and the ore that brought riches

To barons hiring the peasants to labor in darkness for wages,

And of cities turning water and wood into maritime commerce --

This region of finance, factories, shipyards and millstreams and money,

Needing no longer the slave to perform what the hireling did cheaper,

Set the slave free in a sense, for it gave him no voice in its councils.

Southward, a region of mansions whence masters surveyed their plantations --

Empires of indigo, rice, and tobacco that bowed to King Cotton

Once Whitney, ginning the seed from its staples, had turned it to profit --

A region that bought its needs from the North, but despised its aggression,

Lived on the labor of bondslaves, which lifted a few to life's summit,

While the many, both black and poor white, condemned to poverty's portion,

Envied their masters' position, mistrusted their equals in hardship

(For poor whites exulted in being the betters of African captives,

While blacks had reason to fear those who blamed them for life's degradation),

And dreamed, both black in the field and poor white in his tumbledown shanty,

Of hearing Jubilee's trumpet proclaiming their day of redemption.

Neither the North nor the South, though, in spite of the issue that split them,

Wanted the parting of ways that would end in the warfare of brothers;

United in friendship by law and ties of rebellion and triumph,

Their leaders labored to stabilize fractures dividing a nation

And kept the portions together as long as their compromise prospered,

But passions that widened the fracture and rendered compromise fruitless

Pushed them at last to submit their contention to trial by combat.