Quotessence
Home / Authors / Shelby Foote
Shelby Foote

Shelby Foote Quotes

Historian

Filter quotes by topic

AllAmerican Civil WarCivil WarThinkingWarWritingIfsShilohBattle Of ShilohCivil War Western TheaterWantBookHistoryPeopleYearsCivil War Eastern TheaterFirstsFiveMenWayAbraham Lincoln

Famous Shelby Foote Quotes

“He could do little. Brandy might help, he thought, but when he poured some into the hurt man’s mouth it ran back out again. Presently a colonel, Johnston’s chief of staff, came hurrying into the ravine. But he could do nothing either. He knelt down facing the general. “Johnston, do you know me? Johnston, do you know me?” he kept asking, over and over, nudging the general’s shoulder as he spoke. But Johnston did not know him. Johnston was dead.”

American Civil WarConfederate ArmyConfederate States Of AmericaCivil War Western TheaterBattle Of ShilohArmy Of Tennessee
Book:The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
Create image

“I could see their faces then, and the army became what it really was: forty thousand men—they were young men mostly, lots of them even younger than myself, and I was nineteen just two weeks before—out on their first march in the crazy weather of early April, going from Mississippi into Tennessee where the Union army was camped between two creeks with its back to a river, inviting destruction.”

American Civil WarCivil War Western TheaterBattle Of Shiloh
Book:Shiloh
Create image

“That was when General Johnston rode up. He came right past where I was standing, a fine big man on a bay stallion. He had on a broad-brim hat and a cape and thigh boots with gold spurs that twinkled like sparks of fire. I watched him ride by, his mustache flaring out from his mouth and his eyes set deep under his forehead. He was certainly the handsomest man I ever saw, bar none; he made the other officers on his staff look small.”

American Civil WarCivil War Western TheaterBattle Of Shiloh
Book:Shiloh
Create image