Jim’s Reviews > The Civil War, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian > Status Update

Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest to Gen Braxton Bragg: I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it.

Jefferson Davis to R E Lee: Were you capable of stooping to it, you could easily surround yourself with those who would fill the press with your laudations, and seek to exalt you for what you had not done rather than detract from the achievements which will make you and your army the subject of history....

'General, where are your dead men?' a young officer asked Brig. Gen. John R. Gordon. 'I haven't got any, sir!' he shouted as he rode past on his black stallion. 'The almighty has covered my men with his shield and buckler.'

A Union private on Grant at Vicksburg: "He had on his old clothes and was alone. He sat on the ground and talked with the boys with less reserve than many a little puppy of a lieutenant. He told us that he had got as good a thing as he wanted here."

Soldier at Champion Hill: "There they lay, the blue and the grey intermingled; the same rich American blood flowing out in little rivulets of crimson; each thinking he was in the right."

Stonewall Jackson's last words: "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

Lee at Fredericksburg: It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.