Gregory A. Coco > Quotes

“A Union soldier recalled the Confederate dead along Cemetery Ridge: No words can depict the ghastly picture…the men lay in heaps, the wounded wriggling and groaning under the weight of the dead among whom they were entangled….I could not long endure the gory, ghastly spectacle. I found my head reeling, the tears flowing and my stomach sick at the sight. For months the specter haunted my dreams…”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“only approximately 25 percent of the citizens of the United States and Confederate States were actual professed Christians. This particular brand of religious myth had not yet really taken hold of society.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“Quotes like these make one wonder as to the Commission’s real purpose for being at Gettysburg, and brings to mind the words used by an overworked surgeon when he exclaimed, “I’d give 100 DD’s [doctors of divinity] for one extra M.D. right now!”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“story of Private Stephen Kelly of Co. E, 91st Pennsylvania. He joined that unit in August 1861, and was mustered out three years later in Philadelphia. Several years after the war Kelly had occasion to visit the battlefield park and was surprised to find his own grave, (#A-88) nicely defined in the Pennsylvania section of the National Cemetery. It is there today, but Kelly was not in it. He took the whole matter in stride and in good humor, and was once heard to say: “[E]ach Decoration Day I go up there and strew some flowers on the tomb of the man who is substituting for me.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“Finally, one would question the absurd idea that anyone would be proud to belong to a race that could create a hellish nightmare like “Gettysburg.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“According to the evidence available, the military did not keep a single ledger listing and locating all Confederate and Union graves on and around the Gettysburg battlefield.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“With Christianity, it seems, there is always the double-edged sword.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“A wounded New Hampshire soldier named Drake had the unpleasant sensation of watching as a hog tore the flesh from the bones of his recently amputated leg. It was eaten up before his eyes. He recalled that he could feel a sharp pain very clearly as it happened”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“beggars”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“an ex-Confederate colorbearer, Andrew Wall, took a ten-mile walking tour of the historic ground in 1913, at the age of 72. On July 2 of that reunion year, Wall came to a place where he believed he had been standing in 1863, when the point end of the regimental flag staff he was carrying was shot off by Yankee fire. Searching through the thick accumulation of leaves and dirt, Wall was amazed to discover the metal flag pole tip that had been blown away 50 years before.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“If one thing is accomplished in this story of the aftermath of Gettysburg, it is the hope that we can dispel some of the pure nonsense and myth that has grown up surrounding the Civil War, and which is perpetuated even now by movies, novels, and battle reenactments around the country.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“July”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“This particular brand of religious myth had not yet really taken hold of society.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“A soldier in the Eleventh Corps hospital watched for a while as a preacher there was attempting to obtain food and other needed items for the large number of wounded men. This private was Reuben Ruch of the 153rd Pennsylvania and he commented that this was the only time in his life, “when I thought a preacher was any benefit to his fellow man.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“William E. Miller previously a captain in the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, where in combat at Gettysburg he had won the Medal of Honor. During the action east of town on July 3, 1863, he engaged a Confederate horse soldier in a personal hand-to-hand duel, and in the melee his sabre blade had been broken off near the hilt. Fourteen years later in 1877, on the same ground where the engagement took place, Miller found, in a pile of useless battle junk collected by the farmer from the surrounding fields, his very own sword hilt which had been thrown away on that hot July afternoon so long before.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle

“It is simply a fact, however, and must be stated, that millions of people in those days did not need religion, and got along happily without it, contrary to what many might otherwise choose to admit.”
― Gregory A. Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle