Civil War Eastern Theater Quotes

“I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg.
- Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg.”
― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

“Jackson is gone - not entirely gone; Jackson was there today watching, and Ewell sees his eyes - but you cannot blame him for not being Jackson. You must make do with the tools God has given for the job.”
― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

“I believe every man who stood up was either killed or wounded," said Lieutenant Oliver Williams, who was himself hit. This regiment had participated in a touching event, well remembered by both armies. At Fredericksburg in late 1862, after the Sharpsburg campaign, it had held a dress parade at which the band played "Dixie." Across the Rappahannock a Northern band heard and played back the song as a bit of camaraderie. The band of the 20th North Carolina responded by playing "Yankee Doodle." Then both bands, as if by prearrangement, joined in "Home, Sweet Home." This chorus ran along the lines and both armies sang and wept.”
― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

“Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said “went far toward confirming one’s belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute.”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox

“The word began to filter down the lines, and the grumbling stopped, there was something new about this march, something these men had never been a part of before. If the fight in the Wilderness had not gone their way—the most optimistic called it a draw—they were not doing what this army had always done before, they were not going back above the river. If they had never said much about Grant, had never thought him any different from the ones who had come before, if they had become so used to the steady parade of failure, this time there was a difference. Some wanted to cheer, but were hushed by nervous officers. So along the dusty roads hats went up and muskets were held high, a silent salute to this new commander. This time, they were marching south.”
― Jeff Shaara, The Last Full Measure

“Richmond serves one purpose. Lee must defend it. If we threaten the city, he will have to confront us. Lee will soon learn … we are not going away. If the newspapers and all those people in Washington must hear that, fine, I will write it down, send a letter to Stanton. You can deliver it yourself, read it to him, to all of them, make them understand what we are going to do. If it takes all summer … if it takes all year … it is only a matter of time before General Lee must face the consequences.”
― Jeff Shaara, The Last Full Measure

“From first to last the Army of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing, proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always out; it did its level best and lost; when it won the victory was always clouded by a might-have-been, and when at last the triumph came at Appomattox there were so very, very many of its men who weren’t there to see it.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“In the four years of its existence the Army of the Potomac had to atone for the errors of its generals on many a bitter field. This happened so many times—it was so normal, so much the regular order of things for this unlucky army—that it is hardly possible to take the blunders which marred its various battles and rank them in the order of magnitude of their calamitous stupidity.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“Across the river he could see the burnt and crushed buildings of Fredericksburg, the debris piled along the streets, the scattered ruins of people's lives, lives that were changed forever. His men had done that. Not all of it, of course. The whole corps had seemed to go insane, had turned the town into some kind of violent party, a furious storm that blew out of control, and he could not stop it. The commanders had ordered the provost guards at the bridges to let no goods leave the town, nothing could be carried across the bridges, and so what the men could not keep, what they could not steal, they had just destroyed. And now, he thought, the people will return, trying to rescue some fragile piece of home, and they will find this...and they will learn something new about war, more than the quiet nightmare of leaving your home behind. They will learn that something happens to men, men who have felt no satisfaction, who have absorbed and digested defeat after bloody stupid defeat, men who up to now have done mostly what they were told to do. And when those men begin to understand that it is not anything in them, no great weakness or inferiority, but that it is the leaders, the generals and politicians who tell them what to do, that the fault is there, after a while they will stop listening. Then the beast, the collective anger, battered and bloodied, will strike out, will respond to the unending sights of horror, the deaths of friends and brothers, and it will not be fair or reasonable or just, since there is no intelligence in the beast. They will strike out at whatever presents itself, and here it was the harmless and innocent lives of the people of Fredericksburg.”
― Jeff Shaara, Gods and Generals

“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.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that’s many fathoms deep. If I’m not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake”
― Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian

“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

“All in all, it was as if a clean wind from the blue mountains had blown through this army, sweeping away weariness and doubt and restoring the spirit with which the men had first started out; restoring, for the last time in this war—perhaps for the last time anywhere—that strange, magical light which rested once upon the landscape of a young and totally unsophisticated country, whose perfect embodiment the army was. In a way, this army was fighting against reality, just as was Lee’s army. The dream which possessed the land before 1861 was passing away in blood and fire. One age was ending and another was being born, with agony of dissolution and agony of birth terribly mingled; and in the Army of the Potomac—in its background, its coming together, its memories of the American life which it imagined it was fighting to preserve—there was the final expression of an era which is still part of our heritage but which is no longer a part of any living memories.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“They were teaching Hunt the lesson which artillerists have to learn anew in each generation—that a bombardment which will destroy buildings will not necessarily keep brave defenders from fighting on amid the wreckage.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“There is no way to know Jackson’s thought process as he prepared to engage the Union army in front of him. He knew very little about it and certainly he had no idea that, at the moment he ordered his men to advance, he was actually outnumbered five to one. But it was characteristic of the man that his means of determining the enemy’s strength was to hit the enemy in the face and then see what happened. Typical, too, was his impatience to fight. As at Port Republic, he chose to attack before his full force had arrived.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“The whole brigade took a queer, perverse pride in the regimental band of the 6th Wisconsin—not because it was so good, but because it was so terrible. It was able to play only one selection, something called “The Village Quickstep,” and its dreadful inefficiency (the colonel referred to it in his memoirs as “that execrable band”) might have been due to the colonel’s quaint habit of assigning men to the band not for musical ability but as punishment for misdemeanors—or so, at least, the regiment stoutly believed. The only good thing about the band was its drum major, one William Whaley, who was an expert at high and fancy twirling of his baton. At one review, in camp around Washington, the brigade had paraded before McClellan, who had been so taken with this drum major’s “lofty pomposity” (as a comrade described it) that he took off his cap in jovial salute—whereupon the luckless Whaley, overcome by the honor, dropped his baton ignominiously in the mud, so that his big moment became a fizzle.4”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“Meade looked at Grant, and Grant turned, moved toward his tent, said quietly, “General, a moment, if you please …”
― Jeff Shaara, The Last Full Measure

“To be sure, late that afternoon, Union soldiers drifted into the Confederate camp, and soon knots of blue- and gray-clad men dotted the hills around Appomattox Court House; bullets were indeed replaced by backslaps, the rebel yell with a hearty Southern drawl, war fervor with the first hints of war nostalgia, unbridled hatred with nascent relief, and, by the next day, West Point mini-reunions were even breaking out at the McLean farmhouse. But”
― Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“Robert E. Lee had done his duty and, however heartbroken, was prepared to do his duty still. Having devoted himself to winning the war, until the bitter end, he was now beginning the transition to an equally fervent commitment, reuniting the two halves of the divided country. As he slowly rode back to his camp, some fifteen minutes away, advance soldiers began to shout, “General, are we surrendered?” Lee struggled for words to express his sense of despair and came up short; he was speechless. But soon, two solid walls of men began to line the road, and when he came into view, they began to cheer wildly. At the sound and the sight, tears started to roll in the general’s eyes, and his men, too, began to weep.”
― Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“Appomattox was not preordained. There were no established rules or well-worn script. If anything, retribution had been the larger and longer precedent. So, if these moments teemed with hope—and they did—it was largely due to two men, who rose to the occasion, to Grant’s and Lee’s respective actions: one general, magnanimous in victory, the other, gracious and equally dignified in defeat, the two of them, for their own reasons and in their own ways, fervently interested in beginning the process to bind up the wounds of the last four years. And yes, if, paradoxically, these were among Lee’s finest hours, and they were, so, too, were they Grant’s greatest moments.”
― Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“The next day, it was still raining when Lee issued his final order to his troops, known simply as General Orders Number 9. After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them. But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extended to you His blessing and protection. With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous considerations for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell. For generations, General Orders Number 9 would be recited in the South with the same pride as the Gettysburg Address was learned in the North. It is marked less by its soaring prose—the language is in fact rather prosaic—but by what it does say, bringing his men affectionate words of closure, and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t say. Nowhere does it exhort his men to continue the struggle; nowhere does it challenge the legitimacy of the Union government that had forced their surrender; nowhere does it fan the flames of discontent. In fact, Lee pointedly struck out a draft paragraph that could have been construed to do just that.”
― Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“The end of the war was like the beginning, with the army marching down the open road under the spring sky, seeing a far light on the horizon. Many lights had died in the windy dark but far down the road there was always a gleam, and it was as if a legend had been created to express some obscure truth that could not otherwise be stated. Everything had changed, the war and the men and the land they fought for, but the road ahead had not changed. It went on through the trees and past the little towns and over the hills, and there was no getting to the end of it. The goal was a going-towards rather than an arriving, and from the top of the next rise there was always a new vista. The march toward it led through wonder and terror and deep shadows, and the sunlight touched the flags at the head of the column.”
― Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox

“Harvey Hill expressed no regrets for his mulishness and no sympathy for what Lee was seeking to accomplish. “Genl. Lee is venturing upon a very hazardous movement,” he told his wife; “and one that must be fruitless, if not disastrous.”
― Stephen W. Sears, Gettysburg

“It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“Out of Bull Run would come an effort so prodigious that simply to make it would change America forever. In the dust and smoke along the Warrenton Road an era had come to an end.”
― Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury

“Haupt’s head swam at the thought of dumping this howling mob down on a battlefield. Orders were orders, to be sure, but he was enough of an army man to know that there are ways and ways of rendering obedience. He delayed the train as long as he could; then, when he finally sent it off, he wired the officer in command at Fairfax Station to arrest all who were drunk.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“Both realized the political consequences of allowing the resignation of the first general to beat Robert E. Lee on the battlefield.”
― Bradley M. Gottfried, The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns: An Atlas of the Battles and Movements in the Eastern Theater after Gettysburg, Including ... 1864

“While President Jefferson Davis in Richmond and his own soldiers continued to support him with unwavering trust, Gen. Lee wrestled with his own demons, including his ill-fated invasion of Pennsylvania, which had been successful through the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. Other more tangible challenges included his ongoing concern about the well-being of his men due to a lack of adequate supplies, and by his own lingering health problems. His “violent back pains” were probably the result of the chronic heart problems that would kill him in 1870.10”
― Bradley M. Gottfried, The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns: An Atlas of the Battles and Movements in the Eastern Theater after Gettysburg, Including ... 1864

“Among the Confederates killed in this evening encounter in the village was Pvt. Jesse Hutchins of the 5th Alabama Battalion. He enlisted on April 15, 1861, in Livingston, Alabama, and had survived four years of war, only to die in the final few hours.”
― Robert M. Dunkerly, To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place, and the Surrenders of the Confederacy

“Ironically, Meade won the campaign but lost the trust of his commander-in-chief, while Lee lost the campaign but Davis continued to hold him in high esteem. Lingering health concerns, however, including likely bouts of angina pectoris (heart problems), convinced Lee that he was no longer able to satisfy the rigorous demands of running an army in the field. His stamina was waning. Lee tended his resignation after Gettysburg, but Davis would have none of it. Who else could possibly command the Army of Northern Virginia as well as even a weakened Lee?”
― Bradley M. Gottfried, The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns: An Atlas of the Battles and Movements in the Eastern Theater after Gettysburg, Including ... 1864