—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
* * *
There are blackberries in the fields so our boys and the Yanks made a bargain not to fire at each other, and went out in the field, leaving one man on each post with the arms, and gathered berries together and talked over the fight, and traded tobacco and coffee and newspapers as peacefully and kindly as if they had not been engaged for…seven days in butchering one another.139
—A Confederate soldier
* * *
So now I am minus a leg! But never mind, dear parents. I suffer but little pain, and will [be] home in a few weeks, I think.140
—Union soldier William V. H. Cortelyou
* * *
I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.141
—Confederate General Robert E. Lee
* * *
He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind!142
—Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, after a victory
5
War Is Hell
The Civil War claimed over 620,000 lives, which is nearly as many as all the nation’s other wars combined. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman—a friend of the South in times of peace, but its worst enemy during the war—became the first modern advocate of “total war.” When civilians of the South clamored for the gentle treatment that Confederate General Lee and Union General McClellan had provided civilians in the east, Sherman refused. He believed that the North would never defeat the Southern people without causing them to “sicken” of war. His infamous sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction across the state of Georgia was made for the explicit purpose of breaking the South’s will to fight. By war’s end, both Northerners and Southerners, and generals like William Tecumseh Sherman, had grown to hate the terrible oppressions of war.
* * *
Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!143
—Union Admiral David Glasgow Farragut
* * *
Free every slave, slay every traitor, burn every Rebel mansion—if these things be necessary to preserve this temple of freedom to the world and to our posterity. Unless we do this, we cannot conquer them.144
—Northern Congressman Thaddeus Stevens
* * *
We may be annihilated, but we cannot be conquered.145
—Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston
Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
“War is Hell.”146
We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible, make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.147
—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
* * *
I am tired of the battlefield, with its mangled corpses and poor wounded. Victory has no charms for me when purchased at such a cost.148
—Union General George B. McClellan
* * *
There was, on the part of the men, great hysterical excitement, eagerness to go forward, and a reckless disregard of life, of everything but victory.149
—Union General Rufus R. Dawes
* * *
Where men fell and left a vacant place other men stepped into their places and although death stared us in the face there was not a man who faltered.150
—Union soldier Josiah F. Murphey
* * *
I did not think any more of seeing a man shot down by my side than you would of seeing a dumb beast killed. Strange as it may seem to you, but the more men I saw killed the more reckless I became.151
—Union soldier Franklin Bailey, in a letter to his parents
* * *
The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.152
—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, regarding Shiloh
* * *
I hope that I may never see such a sight again. The dead were thicker here than I had seen them anywhere else.153
—Union soldier Tully McCrea, at the Battle of Antietam
* * *
Shiloh was the severest battle fought at the West during the war, and but few in the East equaled it for hard, determined fighting. I saw an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.154
—Union General Ulysses S. Grant
* * *
Those of us who were yet living got back to the edge of the cornfield, and opened such a fire, that, though the enemy charged five times to gain possession of the flag, they were driven back each time with terrible slaughter.155
—Union soldier Charles B. Tanner
* * *
As I witnessed one line swept away by one fearful blast from Kershaw’s men behind the stone wall, I forgot they were enemies and only remembered that they were men, and it is hard to see in cold blood brave men die.156
—Confederate soldier Alexander Hunter, at Fredericksburg
* * *
I would charge hell itself for that old man!157
—Confederate soldier Robert Campbell, talking about General Robert E. Lee
* * *
All night we made compresses and slings—and bound up and wet wounds, when we could get water, fed what we could, travelled miles in that dark over these poor helpless wretches, in terror lest some one’s candle fall into the hay and consume them all.158
—Union nurse Clara Barton, talking about nursing three thousand wounded soldiers that were lying in a field
* * *
The sight of these poor, stricken men as they helped one another, as they bound one another’s wounds, as they painfully hobbled to and fro for water, was a most pathetic one. They lined the roadside for half a mile, a double hedgerow of suffering and death, as men were dying in the fence corners every few minutes.159
—Union soldier Frank Wilkeson, at the Battle of the Wilderness
* * *
Over five thousand dead and wounded men were on the ground in every attitude of distress. A third of them were dead or dying, but enough were alive and moving to give to the field a singular crawling effect.160
—Union General William Woods Averell
* * *
I saw him sitting there gently reclined against the tree, essentially old, this boy of scarcely sixteen summers. His cap had fallen to the ground on one side, his hand resting on his knee. It clasped a little testament opened at some familiar place. He wore the gray. He was my enemy, this boy. He was dead—the boy, my enemy—but I shall see him forever.161
—Union General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
* * *
The balls were whizzing so thick that it looked like a man could hold out a hat and catch it full.162
—A Confederate soldier at Gettysburg
* * *
I never had a clear conception of the horrors of war until that night and the morning. Ongoing round on that battlefield with a candle searching for my friends I could hear on all sides the dreadful groans of the wounded and their heart piercing cries for water and assistance. Friends and foes all together.163
—Confederate soldier Andrew Nelson Erskine
* * *
I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett’s division of Virginians did today in that grand charge upon the enemy.164
—Confederate General Robert E. Lee, at Gettysburg
* * *
Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.165
—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
* * *
I have just heard one of my brothers was killed in the war. Since he chose to be our deadly enemy, I see no reason why I should bitterly mourn his death. Why should I sympathize with the Rebels? They would hang my husband tomorrow if it was in their power.166
—Mary Todd Lincoln
* * *
Darkest
of all Decembers ever has my life known, sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.167
—Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, after Sherman took Atlanta
* * *
It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it.168
—Confederate General Robert E. Lee
* * *
I have amputated limbs until it almost makes my heart ache to see a poor fellow coming in the Ambulance to the Hospital… The horror of this war can never be half told.169
—Union surgeon Claiborne Walton
* * *
You have no idea of the horrible noise the shells make—when one passes over your head with its scream as if fifty locomotive whistles were blowing at once, no man can help dodging.170
—Union surgeon Edwin Hutchinson, in a letter to his mother
* * *
The power they are bringing to bear against our country is tremendous. Its weight may be irresistible—I dare not think of that, however.171
—Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut
* * *
War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.172
—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
* * *
When I say that they were hungry, I convey no impression of the gaunt starvation that looked from their cavernous eyes…that they could march or fight at all seemed incredible.173
—Southern woman Mary Bedinger Mitchell, talking about Confederate soldiers in Virginia
* * *
No description of what we have endured or what we have seen could give the slightest idea of the horrible truth.174
—Confederate Lieutenant Colonel David R. E. Winn
* * *
War means fighting. And fighting means killing.175
—Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest
* * *
I’m ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.176
—Union General John Sedgwick, just moments before being killed by a Confederate sniper at Spotsylvania
* * *
The peculiarity of the rebel yell is worthy of mention, but none of the old soldiers who heard it once will ever forget it. Instead of the deep-chested manly cheer of the Union men, the rebel yell was a falsetto yelp which, when heard at a distance, reminded one of a lot of school boys at play. It was a peculiar affair for a battle yell, but though we made fun of it at first, we grew to respect it before the war was over. When the Union men charged, it was heads erect, shoulders squared and thrown back, and with a firm stride. But when the Johnnies charged, it was with a jog trot in a half-bent position, and although they might be met with heavy and blighting volleys, they came on with the pertinacity of bulldogs, filling up the gaps and trotting on with their never-ceasing “ki-yi” until we found them face-to-face.177
—Union soldier Gilbert Adam Hays
* * *
My dear Edward: I have always been proud of you, and since your connection with the Confederate army, I have been prouder of you than ever before. I would not have you do anything wrong for the world, but before God, Edward, unless you come home we must die. Last night I was aroused by little Eddie’s crying. I called and said, “What is the matter, Eddie?” and he said, “Oh, Mamma! I am so hungry.” And Lucy, Edward, your darling Lucy; she never complains, but she is growing thinner every day. And before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die. Your Mary.178
—Letter presented by Confederate deserter Edward Cooper in his defense at his court-martial
* * *
Sitting at the base of a pine tree I saw a line sergeant. His face was stained with blood, which had oozed from under a bandage made of an old shirtsleeve, tightly bound around his eyes. By his side sat a little drummer boy, with unstrung drum and the sticks put up standing on the ground before him. The muscular form of the sergeant was bent forward, his chin resting on his hands, his elbows on his knees. His figure conveyed to me the impression of utter hopelessness. The small drummer looked up the road, and then down the road, with anxious gaze. I stopped for an instant, and asked, “What is the matter?” The drummer looked up at me, his blue eyes filled with tears, and answered: “He’s my father. Both his eyes were blinded on the picket line this morning. I am waiting for an ambulance to come along. I don’t know where the field hospitals are.” I hurriedly pointed in the direction of some field hospitals we had passed a few hundred yards back. The two rose up and walked slowly off, the son leading his blinded father by the hand, leading him to the operating table, and I hastened on, swallowing my tears.179
—Union soldier Frank Wilkeson
6
Facing the Inevitable
The leadership of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, combined with the valor of Southern troops, allowed the South to keep the war a virtual stalemate in Virginia for four years. Through the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, and corresponding valor of Northern troops, the North was able to defeat Southern armies it faced in the western theater of the war and overrun virtually every Southern state east of the Mississippi River except Virginia. After Grant was brought east to face Lee, and Sherman marched all the way across Georgia virtually unopposed, most people saw the South’s defeat as inevitable. What had begun four years earlier at Fort Sumter would end at the Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
* * *
My dear father, this is my last letter to you. I’ve been struck by a piece of shell, and my right shoulder is horribly mangled. I know that death is inevitable. I will die far from home, but I have friends here who are kind to me. May we meet again in heaven.180
—Confederate soldier J. R. Montgomery
* * *
Everyone knows and feels that we are fighting against hope itself—when everything is even now lost forever.181
—Confederate soldier James Edward Hall
* * *
Woe to those who began this war if they were not in bitter earnest.182
—Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, after Atlanta fell
Confederate President Jefferson Davis
“If the confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, ‘died of a theory.’”183
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.184
—President Abraham Lincoln, in his “Meditation on the Divine Will”
* * *
If we are to die, let us die like men.185
—Confederate General Patrick Cleburne
* * *
I am a tired man. Sometimes I think I am the tiredest man on earth.186
—President Abraham Lincoln
* * *
Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.187
—Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s last words
* * *
I have seen what Romancers call glorious war. I have seen it in all its phases. I have heard the booming of cannon and the more deadly rattle of musketry at a distance—I have heard it all nearby and been under its destructive showers. I have seen men and horses fall thick and flat around me. I have seen our own men bloody and frightened and flying before the enemy. I have seen them bravely charge the enemy’s lines and heard the shout of triumph as they carried the position. I have heard the agonizing shrieks of the wounded and dying—I have passed over the battlefield and seen the mangled forms of men and horses in frightful abundance. Men without heads, without arms, and others without legs. All this I have witnessed and more, till my heart sickens; and war is not glorious as novelists would have us believe. It is only when we are in the heat and flush of battle that it is fascinating and interes
ting. It is only then that we enjoy it. When we forget ourselves and revel in the destruction we are dealing around us. I am now ashamed of the feelings I had in those hours of danger. The whistling bullets and shells were music to me, I gloried in it—it delighted and fascinated me—I feared not death in any forms; but when the battle was won and I visited the field a change came over me, I see the horrors of war, but it was necessary.188
—Confederate Major John Pelham
* * *
Missus, we’re even now; you sold all my children; the Lord took all yours; not one left to bury either of us; now I forgive you.189
—An old slave mother, to her mistress, after a battle in which the mistress’s last son had been killed
* * *
The enlisted men were exceeding accurate judges of the probable result which would ensue from any wound they saw. They had seen hundreds of soldiers wounded, and they had noticed that certain wounds always resulted fatally. They knew when they were fatally wounded, and after the shock of discovery had passed, they generally braced themselves and died in a manly manner. It was seldom that an American or Irish volunteer flunked in the presence of death.190
—Union soldier Frank Wilkeson
* * *
I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.191
—Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, to President Lincoln
* * *
I see the President almost every day… I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln’s dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression… None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man’s face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.192
—Walt Whitman
* * *
The deep waters are closing over us.193
—Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, after the Confederate loss at Nashville
* * *
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation… We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.194
The Civil War Page 4
