The Guns of the South Quotes

“If a republic will stand or fall on the fate of any single man, it finds itself in grave danger indeed,”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“The United States are here, as are we; our two nations have a common border which stretches for two thousand miles, more or less. Either we learn not to be distracted by our differences or we fight a war every generation, as the nations of Europe are in the habit of doing. I would not care to see such folly come to our shores.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Isn't this grand? Here I am, a nobody from a nowhere town in North Carolina, and now I've seen Richmond and Washington City both. Who'd've figured I'd travel so far? Must be close to two hundred miles down to Rivington."

Caudell nodded. The army had expanded his life. Before the war, outside of a couple of trips to Raleigh, he'd spent his whole life inside Nash County. Now he'd been in several different states and even though recalling it still came hard sometimes-a for eign country: the United States.

Whether in a foreign country or not, Washington was still the source of traditions he held dear, as London once might have been to an early Carolina colonist. ...The ordinary folk of Washington City did better at taking their occupiers in stride. Their principal complaint against the rebels was that they had too little money, and that in Confederate currency. Lee had issued an order that made the locals take Southern money in exchange for goods and services, but he could not”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Possum soup, all nice and thick with peanuts,”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“The men of the 47th North Carolina could not actually have looked across Washington to see the burning Long Bridge from the position in which I have them doing so. Geography occa sionally has to bend just a little to serve the novelist's needs.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Now all you two have to do is wait till the sun goes down," he said, adding mischievously, "Fool thing to do, too, if you ask me, gettin' married near the longest day-and the shortest night of the year.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“No wire with teeth reached out to trap him for enemy guns. The soldiers who marched with him had seen too much war to make a lot of unnecessary noise, but they grinned and checked their rifles. They knew what they were gaining here.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“He rounded corners one by one, each time by himself. He didn't think about bravery till long afterwards; at the time, the only thing in his mind was the luckless lieutenant's empty shoes. If he did touch off a torpedo, he'd never know what hit him. Oddly, that helped steady him. He'd seen too many worse ways of dying.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Always nice to have an officer who can see past the end of his beard”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Bullets have no chivalry”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“...the Negro has continued to instruct us as to his capacities. Though the insurrections that so long plagued the Mississippi valley have been reduced to small, scattered outbreaks, the tenacity with which colored men maintained them in the face of overwhelming odds must give us pause if we continue to see those colored men only as the docile servants they appeared to be in days past.
We have tacitly recognized this change, in that many blacks who escaped from bondage during the upheavals of the Second American Revolution remain at liberty, not least, perhaps, be cause, once having tasted freedom, they can no longer safely be returned to servitude. Further, during the war several states relaxed restrictions on what the Negro might be taught, the better to benefit from his intelligent exertions. Once having taught him, one may no longer demand that he subsequently forget.
Yet if the Negro may learn, if he will take up arms in his own defense, if in our hour of peril we contemplated his taking up arms in our defense, where is the justice in leaving him in chains? To do so but exacerbates the risk of servile rebellion and gives our enemies a dagger pointed straight at our hearts. I submit to you, my friends, that emancipation, however distasteful it may appear, exists de facto in large stretches of our territory; gradually acknowledging it de jure will allow us to control its impact upon our nation and will shield us against the excesses we all fear.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Caudell hadn't touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army's old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“You're worried I'll go back to whorin again, I reckon," she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. "Can't say for certain I won't. But it I do, Nate, then you won't have to have nothin' more to do with me, an' that'll be that." She set her hand on his arm. "I don't want it to end that way, I swear I don't."

"I don't, either. It's just-oh, hell." Caudell kicked the dirt again. Foolish to take chances, he thought-would you use a one time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel?”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“He read of Lincoln's second inaugural address and of the broad peace Lincoln hoped to gain, and, a page later, he read of the bullet that had slain Lincoln on Good Friday evening in 1865. He clicked his tongue between his teeth at the thought of a President dying at an assassin's hands. Then, all at once, he shivered as if suddenly seized by an ague. He had seen Lincoln in Louisville that Good Friday, had listened to him plead without avail for Kentucky to stay in the Union, had even spoken with him. He shivered again. In defeat in the world he knew, Lincoln had wanted to martyr himself for the United States. In the other world, where there was no need for it, he had been made a martyr in the hour of his greatest triumph.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Lee stepped over two bodies in gray and one in green, walked inside. The fellow whose head and torso he had seen from the street had fought from a window here. Bullets had chewed up the wall opposite that window; the picture that hung there was no longer recognizable. One of the bandsmen who guarded Lee looked around and said, "Take away the dead men and it ain't so very peculiar”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Isaac Cockrell finched but quickly gathered himself. "My friends," he said yet again, and this time was able to go on from here: "My friends, we're here tonight to show we all want Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the next President of our Confederate States of America."

Forrest's Trees raised a cheer. So did a good many men and women in the crowd; the women, of course, could not vote, but they enjoyed a rousing political spectacle no less than their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“The life of a soldier far from the cannon's roar has little glamour to it.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Lee had the uncomfortable feeling of being more in sympathy with his country's foes than with such friends as the men of America Will Break.

Lincoln said, "Men of Kentucky, men of America, if you vote to go South, you vote to forget Washington and Patrick Henry, Jefferson and Nathan Hale, Jackson and John Paul Jones. Remember the nation your fathers joined, remember the nation so many of you fought so bravely to defend. God bless the United States of America!"

Some cheered; more, Lee thought, booed. He found no small irony in the fact that three of Lincoln's "American" heroes, Washington, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson, had been slaveholding Virginians; Martha Washington's blood ran in the veins of his own wife. And the South revered the Founding Fathers no less than the North; he remembered coming into Richmond on Washington's birthday and finding the War Department closed. And for that matter, Washington on horseback appeared on the Great Seal of the Confederate States. This time, he had no sympathy for Lincoln's claims.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Officers with lace on their gray sleeves and civilians in black claw-hammer coats bustled in and out of Mechanic's Hall, as if the place were an ant's nest, with some workers going forth to forage and others returning with their spoils. Luke pulled up right in front of the building. A Confederate with the two stars of a lieutenant colonel on his collar shouted, "You damned stupid nigger, what do you think you're doing, blocking the-" The words stuck in his throat when Lee got out of the carriage. He pulled himself to attention and snapped off a salute that would have done credit to a cadet from the Virginia Military Institute.

Lee turned and said, "Thank you, Luke," before he returned it. The black man smiled a secret smile as he took the team around the corner to find a place to hitch it.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Lee was pleased at how well both sides held to their pledges of keeping soldiers out of the disputed states. That did not mean no one invaded Kentucky and Missouri, however. Every politician, Northern and Southern, who could stand on a stump and put one word after another, or ten thousand after another ten, flooded into the two states to tell their people just why they should choose the United States or the Confederacy.
Listening to a pro-Confederate orator thunder abuse at the North at a torchlight rally one night in Frankfort, Charles Marshall made a sour face and said, "Anyone can tell he spent the war safely far away from the firing lines. Had he ever faced the Yankees in battle, he would own far more respect for their man hood than he currently displays."
"How right you are," Lee replied, as appalled as his aide at the oratory: the speaker had just called the Northerners cold blooded, fat-faced, nigger-loving moneygrubbers. Lee went on, "I confess to a certain amount of embarrassment at representing the same nation as does this eloquent fellow." To emphasize his distaste, he turned half away from the shouting, gesticulating man up on the platform.
"I know what you mean, sir." But Marshall, as if drawn by some horrid fascination, kept watching the orator. Red light from the torches flickered off his spectacle lenses. "Even if he wins votes, he also sows hatred.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Poor men have more to fear when the laws go down than the rich, for they are less able to protect themselves without law. You had all better shiver when you see a policeman rioting rather than putting down a riot, for he may well come after you next, or stand aside when someone else does.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“After another mile or so, he passed a gang of blacks weeding in a tobacco field. They did not notice him. Their heads were down, intent on the work. Hoes rose and fell, rose and fell, not quickly but at a steady pace that would finish the job soon enough to keep the overseer contented-the eternal pace of the slave.

He'd grown used to faster rhythms. He also remembered, from his dealings with the Rivington seen in Rivington itself, that slaves could be made to work to men and from what he'd those rhythms. But why bother? Things got done, either way. Slowing down was part of coming home, too.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“The Federal President said, "Personally, I hate slavery and all it stands for." That took courage, in front of the audience he faced. He let the rebels' boos and hisses wash over him. When they slackened, he went on, "It is too late now, I think, to rescind the proclamation I issued. Too much has happened since. But if only the Southern states were to return to the Union, the Federal government would fully compensate former masters for their bondsmen's liberty-"

The rebels laughed, loud and long. Lincoln hung his head. Caudell, strangely, found himself respecting the man. Anyone who clung to his principles strongly enough to refuse to abandon them even in complete defeat owned more sincerity than he had credited Lincoln with possessing.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Bealeton. Another sleepy hamlet was about to have its name written down in history in letters of blood.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Carpetbag in hand, Lee descended to the muddy ground out side the Virginia Central Railroad depot at the corner of Sixteenth and Broad. The depot was a plain wooden shed, much in need of paint. A banner on the door of the tavern across the street advertised fried oysters at half price in honor of George Washington's birthday.

The banner made Lee pause in mild bemusement: strange how the Confederacy still revered the founding fathers of the United States. Or perhaps it was not so strange. Surely Washington, were he somehow to whirl through time to the present, would find himself more at home on a Southern plantation than in a brawling Northern factory town like Pittsburgh or New York. And, of course, Washington was a Virginian, so where better to celebrate his birthday than Richmond?”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Assassins murdered freedom merely by existing.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“enough to the Stars and Stripes and different enough from”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“At my age, I find I must be careful of my sleep, for I need it more but have more trouble winning it.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South