The Civil War

We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire.

He spoke just 269 words. He started off by reminding his audience that just 87 years had passed since the founding of the nation, and then he went on to embolden the Union cause with some of the most stirring words ever spoken.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

The country be damned, there is no country, there has been no country, for a year or more. You are the country to these men.

The bird of our country is a debilitated chicken, disguised in eagle feathers. We have never been a nation. We are only an aggregate of states, ready to fall apart at the first serious shock.

America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains. The compass just points up and down. And we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north or a south. We are one and undivided.

Once a black Union Soldier spotted his former owner among a group of Confederate prisoners. 'Hello massa' he said, 'bottom rail on top this time'.

Pickett was horrified. When told to rally his Division for a possible Union counterattack, Pickett answered, "General Lee, I have no division now." Pickett never forgave Lee. Years later he said, "That old man had my division slaughtered."

Probably his finest hour was after the repulse of Pickett's Charge. He walked out into the field, met the men retreating, and said "It is all my fault."

Sherman will never go to hell. He'll flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards.

We are separated because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced North from South, because we hated each other so.

That man Grant will fight us everyday and every hour until the end of the war.

While Grant conferred with Meade, members of his staff described Grant’s triumphs in the West. Veterans of the Army of the Potomac were not impressed. "That may be," one said, "But Grant never met Bobby Lee."

I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without dishonor.

News stories described him coolly smoking under fire, and admirers shipped him barrels of cigars. A delighted Northern public now thought they knew what the initials in his name stood for: they called him "Unconditional Surrender Grant."

"You may forgive us," a surrendering Rebel officer [Henry A. Wise] told Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain after the ceremony at Appomattox, "but we won’t be forgiven. There is a rancor in our hearts, which you little dream of. We hate you, sir."

He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind.

The Confederacy has been done to death by politicians.

The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until after the egg is laid.

Washington. Dear Ellen: I went to the White House shortly after tea, where I found "the Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!