Glory Road Quotes

“His soldiers and the country might have been better off if Burnside had been more of a quitter, but that was one defect which he lacked.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“Like most presidents, Lincoln was forever being given dramatic compositions by men in high positions with the assurance that his signature at the foot of the paper, his nod of approval to the man who had written it, would solve everything and enable him to sleep quietly of nights.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“Nobody was ready for it, and nobody could quite understand it now that it was happening. But somehow it was being determined that democracy henceforth, perhaps for some centuries to come, would operate through a new instrument. Sovereignty of the states was dying, North as well as South, and going with it was the ancient belief that the government which governs least is the government which governs best.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“Nothing would come of this immediately, his lordship believed; but the Democrats who quietly confided in him—cautious men who talked obliquely, stopping short of flat commitments, letting inferences and gestures speak for them—had implied that if their party came into power in the North “they would be disposed to accept an offer of mediation, if it appeared to be the only means of putting a stop to hostilities.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“The general was more easy, and today he had guests at the luncheon table. They may have been oddly chosen, all things considered. They came out of the past, when it had been possible for General Burnside to have friends in the army. It did not seem possible now. The weight of command made him suspect the motives of all around him.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“Wherever caste lives, wherever class power exists, whether it be on the Thames or on the Seine, whether on the Ganges or on the Danube, there the South has an ally.… Never until we welcome the Negro, the foreigner, all races as equals, and melted together in a common nationality, hurl them all at despotism, will the North deserve triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road

“Sovereignty of the states was dying, North as well as South, and going with it was the ancient belief that the government which governs least is the government which governs best.”
― Bruce Catton, Glory Road