Robert L. O'Connell

“There is an undeniably daffy aspect to Sherman. Calling him a motormouth understates the case: he was a veritable volcano of verbiage, as borne out by a mountain of letters, memoranda, and other official papers, not to mention the uniformly gabby impression he left among contemporaries. If there were a contest for who spoke the most words in a lifetime, Sherman would have been a finalist—he lived a long time and slept very little; otherwise he was talking. He said exactly what was on his mind at that instant, until his quicksilver brain turned to an entirely different matter, then to a third, and perhaps to a fourth, then back to the first—unceasing—spewing orders, analysis, advice, and anecdotes in a random pattern that often left listeners stunned and amazed. One prominent Civil War historian, Gary Gallagher, described Sherman as lacking cognitive filters. It all came out. And this is a real problem in trying to resurrect the man’s nature.”
― Robert L. O'Connell, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman

“In other words, what we know for sure is entirely limited, and all the rest is basically opinion.”
― Robert L. O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal & the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic