More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
This early experience made Grant tend to view war as a hard-luck saga of talented, professional soldiers betrayed by political opportunists plotting back in Washington.
James Longstreet served as best man and two groomsmen, Cadmus M. Wilcox and Bernard Pratte, were to join him in the Confederate army; all three later surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.
Many major figures in history could have succeeded in almost any environment, whereas Grant could only thrive in a narrower set of circumstances. He not only had military skills and experience, but believed wholeheartedly in the Union case. As he reminisced, “I wanted to leave the country if disunion was accomplished . . . I only wanted to fight for the Union.”55
“kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt.”
the man who had recently toiled as a store clerk, who had felt cursed by fate, who had lobbied wearily for appointment as a colonel, had been unexpectedly bumped up to brigadier general in charge of four regiments, or about four thousand men, without having fought a single battle. And in the end he required political pull to do so. After years of wandering, Grant had popped up in the right congressional district in the right state. Lincoln had the power to appoint brigadier generals of volunteers, and the Illinois caucus enjoyed such sway that six Illinois brigadiers were selected, two more
...more
Johnston had a knack for inspiring his men with high-flown rhetoric, and he swore the next day he would water his horse either in the Tennessee River or in hell.
“He always sought to speak of the good in men rather than the evil, and if he had to speak of the bad qualities in a man he would close his remarks with the mention of his good points, or excuses why he did not have them.”45
