The Civil War (documentary) quotes

Sherman will never go to hell. He'll flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards.

In less than six months, from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor to Petersburg, Grant had nearly destroyed his Army.

July 4th 1864. The Glorious fourth has come again and we have had quite a celebration, with guns firing shot and shell into Petersburg to remind them of the day. This day makes four Fourth of Julys I have passed in the Army. The first at Camp Clark, the second at Harrison's Landing, the third at Gettysburg, and today at Petersburg.

A man who would stay on an ironclad from choice is a candidate for the insane asylum.

I had a good time in Washington. Lager beer and a horse and buggy, and in the evening, horizontal refreshment! Or, in plainer words, riding a Dutch gal. Had a good time generally, I tell you.

Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. ... All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn, so they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs but arms are looked for under hoops, and, sad to say, found.

The news came like a flash of lightning, staggering and blinding everyone. Farewell old fella, we privates loved ya because you made us love ourselves.

Every evening for a month during the Siege, a Georgia sharpshooter played his cornet so beautifully, that men on both sides stopped to listen.

To avenge Sherman’s victories in Georgia, six Confederate agents slipped into New York City, armed with phosphorous, intent upon burning down the City's most fashionable hotels. They managed to light 10 fires and set P.T. Barnum's museum ablaze. Firemen put everything out. All but one of the Confederates got away. "The people of the North can't be rolling in wealth and comfort," the captured man said before he was hanged, "while we in the South are bearing all the hardship and privations."

I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. [...] I think that if there had been more Southern successes, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war.

Dear Nat, I think well of the President. He has a face like a Hoosier Michelangelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut crisscross lines, and its doughnut complexion. I do not dwell on the supposed failures of his government. He has shown an almost supernatural tact in keeping the ship afloat at all. I more and more rely upon his idiomatic western genius.

Not the fall of Richmond, nor Wilmington, nor Charleston, nor Savannah, nor Mobile, nor all the combined can save the enemy from constant and exhaustive drain of blood and treasure, which must continue, until he shall discover that no peace is attainable unless based on the recognition of our indefeasible rights.

If it hadn’t begun before, the Lost Cause was born with his words. As Davis spoke at Richmond, his audience could hear Grant’s guns at Petersburg, just 20 miles away. More and more, it was becoming a Confederacy of the mind.

Lincoln now issued a proclamation, making the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving. In the trenches of Petersburg, 120,000 turkey and chicken dinners were served to Grant's huge Army. Only yards away, the Confederates had no feast, but held their fire all day in respect of the Union holiday.

On the night of November 25th [1864], at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar opened. Three brothers had starring roles: Edwin, Junius and John Wilkes Booth. At one point in Shakespeare’s play, Cassius speaks of the assassination of Caesar: "How many ages hence shall this, our lofty scene, be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?"