American Civil War Quotes - Page 6

• Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  War, History, Sitting

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• Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

  Walt Whitman

  War, Blood, History

  Walt Whitman (1995). “Specimen Days: & Collect”, p.314, Courier Corporation

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• We are scattered, stunned; the remnant of heart left alive is filled with brotherly hate... Whose fault? Everybody blamed somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  Hate, War, Hero

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• Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  War, Writing, Heart

  Mary Boykin Chesnut (2011). “Mary Chesnut's Diary”, p.215, Penguin

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• Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  War, Believe, History

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• Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Records, Conflict

  Winston Churchill (1958). “A History of the English-speaking Peoples: The Great democracies”

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• The Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States.

  Bruce Catton

  War, History, United States

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• From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

  Richard P. Feynman

  War, Discovery, Views

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.13, Princeton University Press

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• Like most Rebel soldiers, Sam Watkins owned no slaves.

  Bruce Catton

  War, History, Soldier

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• The 1860 election became a referendum on the southern way of life.

  Bruce Catton

  War, History, Southern

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• Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers - if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible.

  Bruce Catton

  Country, War, Numbers

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• Nathan Bedford Forrest ... used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. He liked horses because he liked fast movement, and his mounted men could get from here to there much faster than any infantry could; but when they reached the field they usually tied their horses to trees and fought on foot, and they were as good as the very best infantry. Not for nothing did Forrest say the essence of strategy was to git thar fust with the most men.

  Bruce Catton

  Horse, War, Men

  Bruce Catton, James M. McPherson (2014). “American Heritage History of the Civil War”, p.105, New Word City

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• I have been blind expecting everything to stay the same.

  Philibert Orry

  War, History, Blind

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