Tried by War Quotes

“As a Virginian, Scott deplored the cry of many Republican politicians and newspapers for an invasion to “crush the rebels.” Even if successful, he wrote, an invasion would produce “fifteen devastated provinces [that is, the slave states] not to be brought into harmony with their conquerors, but to be held for generations, by heavy garrisons.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“The crisis of the 1860s represented a far greater threat to the survival of the United States than did World War I, World War II, Communism in the 1950s, or terrorism today. Yet compared with the draconian enforcement of espionage and sedition laws in World War I, the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in the 1940s, McCarthyism in the 1950s, or the National Security State of our own time, the infringement of civil liberties from 1861 to 1865 seems mild indeed.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“Hooker was a controversial choice, but he did everything right in his first three months of command and appeared to have vindicated Lincoln’s decision until he stumbled at Chancellorsville.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“All he wanted or had ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act.” Grant, of course, was that someone. “He did not want to know what I proposed to do.”7 Grant’s account does not ring quite true. After all, the president had vetoed three of his suggestions several weeks earlier.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“THE TIMING OF Lincoln’s public letters turned out to be fortuitous”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“Halleck had defended Grant from criticism after Shiloh, he still had reservations about Grant and relegated him to the largely meaningless position of second in command.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“From Meade came promises to try, but also reports of supply difficulties, roads of bottomless mud, the exhaustion of his men, and a strong defensive perimeter at Williamsport established by Lee while his engineers worked feverishly to rebuild a pontoon bridge. Lincoln had heard it all before, and he must have sighed with exasperation.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“The president told the cabinet on June 28, according to Welles, that he had “observed in Hooker the same failings that were observed in McClellan after the battle of Antietam—a want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not, and ought not to be taken from other points.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“What Lincoln probably did not know was that Halleck suffered severely from hemorrhoids, which grew even more painful under stress, and that he was taking opium to ease the pain.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“On the Confederate side, Joseph Johnston was wounded in the Battle of Seven Pines, and Jefferson Davis replaced him with Robert E. Lee. No one knew it yet, but this move ensured that hard fighting would become the norm for the rest of the war.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“This belief in a Southern Unionist majority turned out to be a delusion.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

“The principal form of property in the South was, of course, slave property. Southern states had seceded because they feared that the Lincoln administration would interfere with the institution—despite the president’s repeated assertions, well into the war, that he had neither the intention nor the power to do so.”
― James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief