The War Between the States

“Dear Douglas Freeman,” the letter of September 21, 1938, began. “We should meet as the only two biographers in the Western Hemisphere who have written a million-word portrait.” The letter was signed with “more than esteem” by Carl Sandburg. The biographer of Lincoln and Lee did get together and were drawn immediately to each other. Sandburg mentioned an incident of a Kentucky father and his two sons. Both sons lost their lives in the Civil War, one fighting for the Union and the other for the Confederacy. There were buried in a double grave with one headstone. “Under the names of his two sons,” Sandburg related, “the father had the inscription: ‘God knows which was right.’”

“Both sides were right,” Freeman replied.

Sandburg was struck by the comment. “I still cogitate on it,” he wrote later. –David E. Johnson, Douglas Southall Freeman

Sherman’s Retreat Through Georgia to the Sea --Paul “the Dutchman” Hartman

What a war! Everything we are or will be goes right back to that period. It decided for once and for all which way we were going, and we’ve gone. –Shelby Foote

[The Civil War was] a bloody mess from start to finish, unredeemable even by Lee or Lincoln, and all the ‘glory’ aura isn’t worth the death of a single soldier. The cause was bad on both sides, and the worst cause won. –Shelby Foote

Yet his (J.E.B Stuart) greatest contribution to military science was not in the realm of battlefield tactics but in his unerring ability to send his commanders accurate, specific, up-to-date reports of enemy movements and intentions—real-time strategic intelligence, as it is called today. It was this gift that Robert E. Lee emphasized in his famous lament that Stuart “never brought me a piece of false information.” --Edward G. Longacre

The Civil War, when “America was put on the cross, died and was resurrected . . . would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write.” --Bob Dylan

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done. –John Brown, on the day of his execution

One man I knew had been north to the big cities and he said it was every feature of such places that we were fighting to prevent. –Inman, in “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier

Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you. Goodbye, and God bless you all. –Gen. Lee to his troops after the surrender at Appomattox. April 9, 1865