Gods and Generals

by Jeff Shaara

And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers.”

I am not ready to grow old, to accept that what I am today is what I will always be.”

Lee watched the fire, thought of the troops, said, “No, General, they are not the same. These men . . . our men are fighting for something that means more to them than obeying their orders. I feel sometimes like God is with us . . . God is protecting these men. He knows they are looking to Him.” Longstreet chewed on the cigar, said, “Maybe. I’m not sure if God is in all the places we want Him to be.”

He found a rock, climbed up, found a dry spot and sat down. Across the river he could see the burnt and crushed buildings in Fredericksburg, the debris piled along the streets, the scattered ruins of people’s lives, lives that were changed forever. His men had done that. Not all of it, of course. The whole corps had seemed to go insane, had turned the town into some kind of violent party, a furious storm that blew out of control, and he could not stop it. The commanders had ordered the provost guards at the bridges to let no goods leave the town, nothing could be carried across the bridges, and so what the men could not keep, what they could not steal, they had just destroyed. And now, he thought, the people will return, trying to rescue some fragile piece of home, and they will find this . . . and they will learn something new about war, more than the quiet nightmare of leaving your home behind. They will learn that something happens to men, men who have felt no satisfaction, who have absorbed and digested defeat after bloody stupid defeat, men who up to now have done mostly what they were told to do. And when those men begin to understand that it is not anything in them, no great weakness or inferiority, but that it is the leaders, the generals and politicians who tell them what to do, that the fault is there, after a while they will stop listening. Then the beast, the collective anger, battered and bloodied, will strike out, will respond to the unending sights of horror...