The Civil War Quotes

“The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative

“Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said “went far toward confirming one’s belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Andrew Johnson. He had been lying rather low since the inauguration, yet he showed this evening that he had lost none of his talent for invective on short notice.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Other trophies included a bundle of captured flags, which he sent to City Point that evening by a special messenger. Lincoln was delighted. “Here is something material,” he said as he unfurled the shot-torn rebel colors; “something I can see, feel, and understand. This means victory. This is victory.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Aboard a Chesapeake Bay steamer, not long after his surrender, the general heard a fellow passenger insisting that the South had been “conquered but not subdued.” Asked in what command he had served, the bellicose young man — one of those stalwarts later classified as “invisible in war and invincible in peace” — replied that, unfortunately, circumstances had made it impossible for him to be in the army. “Well, sir, I was,” Johnston told him. “You may not be subdued, but I am.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“been illogically arrived at; it had not; but the logic, such as it was, was based insubstantially on hope.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“severing Sherman’s life line he would provoke him into rashness or oblige him to retreat.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“the indestructibility of the army pack mule. Falling from a height of thirty feet, one of these creatures—watched in amazement by a regiment of troopers whose colonel recorded the incident in his memoirs—“turned a somersault, struck an abutment, disappeared under water, came up, and swam ashore without disturbing his pack.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“These were the red hours of the conflict, hours no man who survived them would forget, even in his sleep, forever after. Fighting thus at arm’s length across that parapet, they were caught up in a waking nightmare, although they were mercifully spared the knowledge, at the outset, that it was to last for another sixteen unrelenting hours.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“when corps commanders started toppling, alive one minute and dead the next, struck down as if by a bolt of blue-sky lightning, who was safe? All down the line, from brigadiers to privates, spirits were heavy with intimations of mortality.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Grant was as usual a good deal more intent on what he had in mind to do to the enemy than he was on what the enemy might or might not do to him.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“After notifying the port authorities that he would be steaming out next morning, he went ashore for Mass, then came back and turned in early as an example for his officers and men, who did so too, despite many invitations to dine that night in Cherbourg with admirers.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” R. M. T. Hunter wanted to know.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Another was a return to the suggestion advanced informally by Pat Cleburne the previous winter, soon after Missionary Ridge, that the South free its slaves and enlist them in its armies. Hastily suppressed at the time as “revolting to Southern sentiment, Southern pride, and Southern honor,” the proposition seemed far less “monstrous” now than it had a year ago, when Grant was not at the gates of Richmond and Sherman had not made his march through Georgia. Seddon, for one, had been for it ever since the fall of Atlanta, except that he believed emancipation should follow, not precede, a term of military service.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“It must have been the sense of having done his whole duty, and expended upon the cause every energy of his being, which enabled him to meet the approaching catastrophe with a calmness which seemed to those around him almost sublime.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“Who knows," he asked as his
narrative drew toward its close, "but it may
be given to us, after this life, to meet again in
the old quarters, to play chess and draughts,
to get up soon to answer the morning roll
call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill
and dress parade, and again to hastily don
our war gear while the monotonous patter of
the long roll summons to battle? Who knows
but again the old flags, ragged and torn,
snapping in the wind, may face each other
and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the
cries of victory fill a summer day? And after
the battle, then the slain and wounded will
arise, and all will meet together under the two
flags, all sound and well, and there will be
talking and laughter and cheers, and all will
say: Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the
old days?”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox