290 Quotes About Civil-war

There is no other legend quite like the legend of the Confederate fighting man. He reached the end of his haunted road long ago. He fought for a star-crossed cause and in the end he was beaten, but as he carried his slashed red battle flag into the dusky twilight of the Lost Cause he marched straight into a legend that will live as long as the American people care to remember anything about the American past.

We have heard so many different rumors, about different subjects, that we are rather slow to believe anything we don't see. (Money especially.)

An Army is not merely a large aggregation of men with guns in their hands. To make an army, you must have men and you must have guns, but there is an additional, intangible ingredient which is the deciding factor in its success or failure. An army has a personality. It has a character of its own, totally aside from the character of the individuals who compose it.

What it really means is that the general must understand that he is not a free agent and cannot hope to become one. He has to work within the limitations imposed by the fact that he is working for a democracy, which means that at times he must modify or abandon the soundest military plan and make do with a second-best.

If things keep going the way they have in recent years, acrimonious historical debate may soon rival kudzu for prominence on the southern landscape

The destiny of the land, the nation, the South, the State, the County, was already whirling into the plunge of its precipice, not that the State and the South knew it, because the first seconds of fall always seem like soar.

I am passionately interested in how my Country works, and if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America, you have to know about the Civil War.

Quite often, people inaccurately comment about the villains of the South and the heroes of the North. Such statements cause bitter debates. Thus, it is important to recognize the good and the bad from both the Confederate and Union armies. The fact is, the war stripped many men of their inhibitions and their immoral behaviors detrimentally affected all fellow Americans.

We were green; most of us had never left home before (officers as well as men, except the officers carried their greenness better) yet here we were, traveling south up an enemy river past slow creeks and bayous and brooding trees. I thought to myself if this was the country the Rebels wanted to take out of the Union, we ought to say thank you, good riddance