Favorite American Civil War Quote? Voices From Time You Can't Forget

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
gb 1863 pa collegesz 1.jpg

Using this 1863 image from Gettysburg, of Pennsylvania College to symbolize us smack in the middle of the war, where so many were lost and so many left behind. Hit me, one building there my daughter entered as a Freshman and in a ceremony as old as the college, graduated, and exited through it. We left a lot in those years as we did at Gettysburg. So leave some here.

Maybe we have this thread? Can't find it. I don't mean a quote by a later author- they're too easy because authors glue together words staggeringly well.

Anyone, soldier or, one supposes, politician ( if you have to.... ), letter from home, battle quotes- anything at all. We have so many intriguing signatures here, on member profiles it always makes me smile. What a well read, amazingly researched, dedicated bunch.

I'll have to come back, personally. There are so many. Just when you think someone either summed it up, or got to you, Mother Bickerdyke will show up.

" I have a commission from God Almighty himself to do everything I can for every miserable creature who comes in my way; he is always sure of two friends, God and me. "
 
At Cold Harbor Cpl. Mike Scannell of company I of the 19th Massachusetts picked up the colors after it's bearer had been hit. The regimental commander told him, "Mike, you keep the colors." "Not as a corporal," he replied firmly. "Too many corporals have been killed already carrying colors." "I'll make you a sergeant," promised the officer. "That's business," Mike replied, "I'll carry the colors."

There is another funny incident involving Mike Scannell as well. An Irish immigrant, he was later surrounded and captured. While demanding his surrender a rebel shouted at him, "You damned Yank, give me that flag!" The sergeant replied, "Well it's twenty years since I came to this country, and you're the first man who ever called me a Yankee. Take the flag for the compliment."
 
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"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

- William Tecumseh Sherman
Sherman would have a screaming fit about the press today, wouldn't he?
 
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One of my favorites.... After the failed assault on Vicksburg in May 1863, Grant sent a message to John A. McClernand, delivered by James Wilson. McClernand became angry, cursing the message, which Wilson took as an insult. Wilson threatened to pull McClernand "off your horse and beat the boots off you." McClernand apologized, "I was simply expressing my intense vehemence on the subject matter, sir, and I beg your pardon."

Also, a sign at the Evergreen Cemetery at Gettysburg: "All persons found using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law."
 
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As I'm reading through her book, I'm going to find it's thread here. I've a few things I'd like to add. That quote scratched at my soul like nothing else has so far.


It deserves another thread. Insight is a living thing. It's ridiculous, what can be picked up once we understand nothing much is carved in stone, and just listen. Elizabeth Keckley was walking platinum, and a lot, magic.
 
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At Cold Harbor Cpl. Mike Scannell of company I of the 19th Massachusetts picked up the colors after it's bearer had been hit. The regimental commander told him, "Mike, you keep the colors." "Not as a corporal," he replied firmly. "Too many corporals have been killed already carrying colors." "I'll make you a sergeant," promised the officer. "That's business," Mike replied, "I'll carry the colors."

There is another funny incident involving Mike Scannell as well. An Irish immigrant, he was later surrounded and captured. While demanding his surrender a rebel shouted at him, "You ****ed Yank, give me that flag!" The sergeant replied, "Well it's twenty years since I came to this country, and you're the first man who ever called me a Yankee. Take the flag for the compliment."


Ok, I'm sorry but we cannot leave Sergeant ( I hope ) Mike Scannell here. Please tell all of us he came home, despite this determination to carry the colors? It's more hopeful as a prisoner.
 
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Ok, I'm sorry but we cannot leave Sergeant ( I hope ) Mike Scannell here. Please tell all of us he came home, despite this determination to carry the colors? It's more hopeful as a prisoner.

He ended up in Andersonville and some of the men he had served with thought he had died in captivity, but he was thankfully among the survivors and lived for many years after the war.

"I returned to the city and walked about, often meeting some of the men of my regiment, among them Michael O'Leary of Company F, who looked as though he had just come off dress parade, having a new uniform and his shoes nicely polished. He was delighted to see me, said that the rebels had urged him to take the oath of allegiance, but he had told them he could never look Mary Ann in the face if he went back on the old flag. He told me of a number of the men who had died, among them my old friend Mike Scannell. That night I stood in front of the theatre, my hands in my empty pockets, wondering if I should ever have money enough to purchase a ticket....

...Early in May I returned to Annapolis, and was pleasantly quartered in the house of a Mr. Harper, the only man in the city who voted for President Lincoln in 1860. While standing on the street one day a small squad of prisoners passed. This was an unusual sight, as all had come through the lines weeks before. I heard a voice say, “How are you, captain?” [184] and looking up saw a white head sticking out of a bundle of rags, and recognized Sergt. Mike Scannell. I said, “Mike, you are dead.” “Not yet,” was the reply; “but I have been mighty near it. I was sent out to die at Andersonville, from there was taken to Blackshire, Fla., kept until the war was over, then taken within several miles of our lines and turned loose.”

John G. B. Adams, Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment

Thirty years after the war ended the flag of the 19th Massachusetts was returned and Mike Scannell, the former color sergeant who bore it when it was captured, was on hand to deliver it to the commonwealth's governor.

He seems to have been quite the character in life. He had been a shoemaker before enlisting and while at Andersonville he was ordered to make shoes for use by Confederate troops. He flatly refused, stating, "Do you think I'm going to go back on the flag of my adopted country and make shoes for rebs? Not while I have my senses about me."

He also had a tragic connection to Gettysburg. He was in the thick of the fighting and was wounded, but survived. Corporal Patrick Scannell, a brother also serving with the 19th Massachusetts, was not so fortunate. Patrick was killed in action on July 3rd during Pickett's Charge and is buried in Gettysburg National Cemetery.
 
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" If we ever fight again, and I pray God that we may never have to, but if we ever do, we will fight on the same side, and we will fight under the same flag, and the flag will be the glorious old Stars and Stripes, the same our grandsires lifted up, the same our fathers bore; in many a battle's tempest it shed crimson rain, and it today means that what God hath woven in His loom let no man rend in twain "

Ok, politician but he was a soldier first. Enlisted Private, Co E, 23rd OVI to Major, then Governor of Ohio William McKinley, at the Atlanta Exposition's Blue and Gray Reunion, 1895. He and Longstreet hung out, who seemed to have a good time.
 
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"Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas....I protest....against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void."

---Sam Houston, refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

---Sam Houston, when asked by a crowd gathered below his hotel room why he had refused to support the Confederacy
 
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