A Guerra Civil

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.

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

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."

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.

Sherman’s men were still harsher in South Carolina than they had been in Georgia. "Here is where treason began," a private said, "and by God, this is where it shall end."

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."

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

"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."

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.

My shoes are gone. My clothes are gone. I’m weary, sick, and hungry. My family have all been killed or scattered. I have suffered all this for my country. I love my country, but if this war is ever over, I’ll be damned if I ever love another country.

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'.

The Confederacy was cut in two. The Mississippi had become a Union highway. “The father of waters,” Lincoln said, “again goes unvexed to the sea.”

We have lost the Mississippi, and our nation is divided, and there’s not enough left to fight for.

He could not let himself be made a fool, the Union be made a fool, by standing up for principles that could not be vindicated on the battlefield.

He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and he would drop it himself.

Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disaster which has been entailed on the United States. So short lived has been the American Union that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.

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.

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