Gettysburg Quotes

“The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other’s lives.”
― Elisabeth Grace Foley, War Memorial

“You do not know until tried what you are capable of.”
― Sarah Broadhead

“He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.”
― Jason Medina, A Ghost In New Orleans

“The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.
It was Matthew’s voice that broke the silence, asking, “And what happened after that?”
“After that,” said Paul, “came Gettysburg.”
― Elisabeth Grace Foley, War Memorial

“THE SHARPSHOOTER AT GETTYSBURG

As he grew more and more parched, waiting near the Emmitsburg Road that reached up to Gettysburg, Jake thought of peaches and water, until he saw movement across the way, near a pile of wooden fence rails. Rebel skirmishers had been using those rails as cover all morning. Jake set the rear trigger of his Sharps. He prepared to barely caress its forward trigger, the hair trigger, as he waited for a chance to kill someone Jake knew, in all likelihood, was not so different from himself.”
― Charles Phillips "The Sharpshooter 18621864"

“There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white-supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.”
― Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America

“I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield with its mangled corpses & poor suffering wounded. Victory has no charms for men when purchased at such cost.”
― Civil War general George McClelland, quoted in Surgeon in Blue

“In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, an African American CCC unit was assigned to work alongside a white one to restore the historic battleground. The white unit was housed near the town itself, but the town's residents objected to having the African American crew living in the vicinity, so the CCC set up a camp for the African crew some twenty miles away.”
― Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

“How can we ensure that these dead would not have died in vain?

And how can we make sure that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth?

I don’t know about you, but personally, I think it's by being devoted to the same cause to which they gave their last full measure of devotion- by being dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
― Ted Mallory, Prophet, Priest, & Pirate

“How would he protect her, as weak and wounded as he was? If the two armies were about to shell the town again, he had to find a safe place for her to be. And if the Confederates gained Gettysburg itself, they would probably take him as a prisoner. He needed to make sure that Arabella had a place of safety...”
― Sarah Brazytis, The Letter

“In his Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke about “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Well, today, we have a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.”
― Bernie Sanders