14 Quotes by S.C. Gwynne

Buffalo Hump had one of those Comanche names - there were a large number of them - that theprudish whites could not quite bring themselves to translate. His Nermernuh name, properly transliterated, was Po-cha-na-quar-hip, which meant “erection that won’t go down.” ...

To make matters worse, Jackson placed great value on regurgitating every last detail of the assigned texts. When, in response to Jackson's question 'What are the three simple machines?' a cadet answered, 'The inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel,' Jackson replied, 'No, sir. The lever, the wheel, and the inclined plane.

The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.

Stonewall Jackson was master of all he surveyed. Two Union forces were withdrawing from his front. There was a certain beautiful symmetry to it. The campaign, which started with a single enemy army pursuing Jackson southward through the valley, would end with two beaten Union armies withdrawing from him in a northerly direction. A week later, Jackson advised his mapmaker, Hotchkiss, to 'never take counsel of your fears.' A person who followed such advice would be doomed to a short life.

Some of them screamed for locks of his hair, to which the blushing general replied, “Really, ladies, this is the first time I was ever surrounded by the enemy!

Will you follow me back to where the fighting is going on?” The men—one hundred of them—responded with a resounding yes. Now Bee pointed to his left, up the slope toward the pine woods on the edge of Henry Hill. “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall,” he said. “Let’s go to his assistance.”16

Success depended once again on speed and deception, qualities that residents of the Shenandoah Valley were beginning to associate with Thomas Jackson. •

If news of his impending doom bothered Jackson, he did not show it. He sent no urgent dispatches to Richmond; he asked no counsel of any of his officers. He wrote no dramatic letters home, as Banks had, bidding a sentimental farewell to his wife as his own death loomed. Jackson seemed, in fact, at the center of this building storm, to be completely calm.

As an instructor, he was patient, forbearing, and tolerant of mistakes, provided his students were trying diligently to learn. Jackson