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Quote by Michael Shaara

“I believe every man who stood up was either killed or wounded," said Lieutenant Oliver Williams, who was himself hit. This regiment had participated in a touching event, well remembered by both armies. At Fredericksburg in late 1862, after the Sharpsburg campaign, it had held a dress parade at which the band played "Dixie." Across the Rappahannock a Northern band heard and played back the song as a bit of camaraderie. The band of the 20th North Carolina responded by playing "Yankee Doodle." Then both bands, as if by prearrangement, joined in "Home, Sweet Home." This chorus ran along the lines and both armies sang and wept.”

Quote by Michael Shaara

Book:The Killer Angels
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Work

The Killer Angels

This novel delves into the Battle of Gettysburg, focusing on the experiences of Union and Confederate soldiers. more

Author

Michael Shaara
Michael Shaara

Michael Shaara was an American historical novelist born on June 23, 1928, and died on May 5, 1988. He is renowned for his historical novels that delve into the stories and fates of individuals behind historical events, with his most famous work being the 'Kane and Abel' series. more

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“It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacArmy Of Northern Virginia
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
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“the long roll called William Wofford’s Georgia brigade to fall in for duty. Orders were issued to fill haversacks with snowballs and form line of battle, and behind its color guards the brigade marched two miles to the camp of Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade. “We were in line of battle on a hill and Kershaw’s formed and come out to fight us,” Georgian Jim Mobley wrote his brother. “The field officers was on their horses and when they come against us, they come with a hollar! and, Benjamin, Great God, I never saw snow balls fly so in my life.” The order to open fire was given at 100 feet. Charge and countercharge were spirited by the Rebel yell. Combat was hand-to-hand, prisoners were taken. “I tell you it beat anything . . . ,” Mobley exclaimed. “There was 4000 men engaged on both sides, and you know it was something!”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of Northern VirginiaChancellorsville Campaign
Book:Chancellorsville
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“At one point they passed a newly abandoned Rebel encampment, and Captain Bowers was surprised to see that it looked just like one of their own. “In every respect it was as good a camp as any we have had. . . .” (Rummaging through this campsite, men of the 2nd Maine came upon a packet of photographs of Federal soldiers. Someone recognized a name on one of them as a man in their brigade, and before long Sergeant Walter Carter, 22nd Massachusetts, was handed the pictures he had lost on the Fredericksburg battlefield five months earlier. And scavengers in the 83rd Pennsylvania recovered some of the fancy French knapsacks they had lost at Gaines’s Mill the previous June.)”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacArmy Of Northern VirginiaChancellorsville Campaign
Book:Chancellorsville
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“Confederates in Jackson’s column reported seeing a Yankee balloon—it was the Eagle—and assumed that if they could see it, it could see them. Yet such were conditions aloft that not a single report reached General Hooker that day from the aeronautical corps that an enemy column was marching to the south and west of Chancellorsville.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacArmy Of Northern VirginiaChancellorsville Campaign
Book:Chancellorsville
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