What are Some of Your Favorite Quotes Of The Civil War?

Not exactly a quote but Hancock was referred to as "the profanest man in an army of profane men". I would very much like to read some of his quotes. I assume they would be unprintable here.

John
I don't know so much, very little is unprintable thesedays. Gratuitous swearing is one thing, but historical quotes should be ok to faithfully post imo. Sweary or not.
And its worth recalling that profanity was, and remains ubiquitous to fighting men. The phrase
"Swearing like a trooper" was conceived aptly I think.
 
Vote Here:
"Why in the nation, General Marcy, couldn't the general have known whether a boat would go through the lock before spending a million dollars getting them there? I am no engineer, but it seems to me that if I wished to know whether a boat would go through a hole, or a lock, common sense would teach me to go and measure it."

President Lincoln's exasperation at learning the General McClellan's plan to construct a temporary bridge in February 1862 near Harpers Ferry had been stymied when the bridge sections (floated on barges up the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal), were too wide to fit through the canal locks. (Marcy was McClellan's Chief of Staff and McClellan's father in law).
This totally avoidable cock-up is certainly one that sticks in my mind.
 
Vote Here:
Forrest to Bragg (after Bragg’s refusal to follow up the stunning Chickamauga victory); there animosity dated back to Shiloh
“I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to..You have played the part of a **** scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me..if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”
(Gonna bet ole Braxton took time out for a “change of drawers” after this exchange!)
 
Vote Here:
Those are all great and they are all in my personal top tier. I used my all-time favorite quote in one of the first Say What? Saturday's.

1566589222519.png
 
Vote Here:
Sherman, 1864:

"But when as a people they tore down our old flag and spat upon it, and called us cowards, and dared us to the contest, then I took up arms to maintain the integrity of our country, and punish the men who challenged us to the conflict...

The defeats we have sustained have hardly made a pause in our course, and the vaunted braves of Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, &c., instead of walking rough-shod over the freemen of the North, are engaged in stealing horses and robbing poor old people for a living, whilst our armies now tread in every Southern State, and your biggest armies in Virginia and Georgia lay behind forts, and dare not come out and fight, us cowards of the North, who have come five hundred miles into their country to accept the challenge."
 
Vote Here:
“We can’t undertake to run state governments in all these Southern States. Their people must do that — though I reckon at first some of them may do it badly.”

—A. Lincoln, April 14, 1865

"We must let the other nations know that we propose to settle our family row in our own way, and "teach the brats [seceding states] their places" if we have to "lick the hide off" of each and every one of them."

--A. Lincoln during a cabinet meeting.
 
Vote Here:
Back
Top