Quotessence
Home / Topics / Army Of The Potomac Quotes

Army Of The Potomac Quotes

Browse 31 quotes about Army Of The Potomac.

Army Of The Potomac Quotes

“They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets; yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much. All that was real had taken place when they were young; everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much -- they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it, and they had enough of the old-fashioned religion to believe without any question that when they passed over they would simply be rejoining men and ways of living which they had known long ago.”

WarYouthCivil WarDeath And DyingAfterlifeFarmRuralArmy Of The Potomac
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“Captain Frank Sterbing believed that the majority of the soldiers of the 121st Pennsylvania were lying on the ground by this point, and the remainder would be soon enough if they remained in their position for another minute. Biddle reached the same conclusion and ordered the broken regiment back to Seminary Ridge. The speed with which the troops crossed back to the seminary was, according to one of the men who made the dash, "remarkable, probably the best on record." (page 102)”

American Civil WarPennsylvaniaCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion ArmyGettysburg CampaignBattle Of GettysburgPennsylvania History
Book:The Maps of Gettysburg: An Atlas of the Gettysburg Campaign, June 3–July 13, 1863
Create image

“The whole brigade took a queer, perverse pride in the regimental band of the 6th Wisconsin—not because it was so good, but because it was so terrible. It was able to play only one selection, something called “The Village Quickstep,” and its dreadful inefficiency (the colonel referred to it in his memoirs as “that execrable band”) might have been due to the colonel’s quaint habit of assigning men to the band not for musical ability but as punishment for misdemeanors—or so, at least, the regiment stoutly believed. The only good thing about the band was its drum major, one William Whaley, who was an expert at high and fancy twirling of his baton. At one review, in camp around Washington, the brigade had paraded before McClellan, who had been so taken with this drum major’s “lofty pomposity” (as a comrade described it) that he took off his cap in jovial salute—whereupon the luckless Whaley, overcome by the honor, dropped his baton ignominiously in the mud, so that his big moment became a fizzle.4”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion Army
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“Kearny had probably seen more fighting than any man on the field. He had served in Mexico as a cavalry captain; had remarked, in youthful enthusiasm, that he would give an arm to lead a cavalry charge against the foe. He got his wish, at the exact price offered, a few days later, leading a wild gallop with flashing sabers and losing his left arm. He once told his servant: “Never lose an arm; it makes it too hard to put on a glove.”

American Civil WarArmy Of The PotomacUnion Army
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“Both realized the political consequences of allowing the resignation of the first general to beat Robert E. Lee on the battlefield.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion Army
Book:The Maps of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run Campaigns: An Atlas of the Battles and Movements in the Eastern Theater after Gettysburg, Including ... 1864
Create image

“Without having planned it—and without any official sanction—Chamberlain suddenly gave the order for Union soldiers to “carry arms” as a sign of their deepest mark of military respect. A bugle call instantly rang out. All along the road, Union soldiers raised their muskets to their shoulders, the salute of honor.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion ArmyAppomattox Campaign
Book:April 1865: The Month That Saved America
Create image

“Reflecting on this order, which lays out a job of work and breathes the very spirit of unhurried calm, one is conscious of that queer feeling of exasperation which, even at this distance, McClellan's acts occasionally inspire. With everything in the world at stake, both for the country and for McClellan personally, why couldn't the man have taken fire just once?”

American Civil WarArmy Of The PotomacUnion Army
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“The army had fought hard and endured much, it had pride and self-pity at the same time, and it was developing its own legend, which - like the profound emotional attachment which it had for its commanding general - would always set it apart from the other Union armies. It was acquiring what can only be called a sort of dogged pessimism, a fatalistic readiness to expect the worst, as if it sensed that its best efforts would be wasted but was not thereby made disheartened; and now as for months to come it would have to keep step with its rival, the Army of Northern Virginia.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion Army
Book:Terrible Swift Sword
Create image

“Meade was more careful and calculating of the odds than Grant . . . and, too, he had the benefit of two years' experience fighting against Robert E. Lee. He took the tactical initiative by translating Emory Upton's feat at Rappahannock bridgehead back in November to seek a similar success against the Spotsylvania salient, as ordered by Grant for May 10. Upton's planning was timely, but not enough time was allotted to position a proper support fire; a day's delay might have awarded a victory to Upton's innovation. It was much the same for the hurried May 12 offensive - there was no time to plan a deliberate exploitation of whatever break might be made in the Confederate lines. This was a very large army with an entrenched high command, and Meade struggled to move it at Grant's arbitrary pace. On May18 (as John Gibbon pointed out the enemy was read, waiting, even anxious for the Yankees to attack, and Grant impatiently ordered this forlorn hope anyway.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion ArmyOverland Campaign
Book:Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac
Create image

“Complaint was made, then and since, that Meade failed to coordinate his attacks, that he was not up to managing these offensive operations. But Cold Harbor was a stark demonstration that by 1864, whether coordinated or not, no frontal assault on the entrenched Army of Northern Virginia could possibly succeed. And at Cold Harbor Meade recognized that fact before Grant did.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacUnion ArmyOverland Campaign
Book:Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac
Create image

“Mead had not been invited to the surrender at the McLean house, but he determined to meet his opposite number before the armies parted. On April 10 he rode through the now-peaceful lines to meet his engineer corps comrade from the old army. "What are you doing with all that gray in your bead!" Lee exclaimed. "That you have a great deal to do with!" Meade replied.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacRobert E LeeUnion ArmyAppomattox Campaign
Book:Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac
Create image

“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.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacArmy Of Northern Virginia
Book:The Killer Angels
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“The word began to filter down the lines, and the grumbling stopped, there was something new about this march, something these men had never been a part of before. If the fight in the Wilderness had not gone their way—the most optimistic called it a draw—they were not doing what this army had always done before, they were not going back above the river. If they had never said much about Grant, had never thought him any different from the ones who had come before, if they had become so used to the steady parade of failure, this time there was a difference. Some wanted to cheer, but were hushed by nervous officers. So along the dusty roads hats went up and muskets were held high, a silent salute to this new commander. This time, they were marching south.”

Historical FictionAmerican Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacOverland Campaign
Book:The Last Full Measure
Create image

“From first to last the Army of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing, proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always out; it did its level best and lost; when it won the victory was always clouded by a might-have-been, and when at last the triumph came at Appomattox there were so very, very many of its men who weren’t there to see it.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The Potomac
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“In the four years of its existence the Army of the Potomac had to atone for the errors of its generals on many a bitter field. This happened so many times—it was so normal, so much the regular order of things for this unlucky army—that it is hardly possible to take the blunders which marred its various battles and rank them in the order of magnitude of their calamitous stupidity.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The Potomac
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“All in all, it was as if a clean wind from the blue mountains had blown through this army, sweeping away weariness and doubt and restoring the spirit with which the men had first started out; restoring, for the last time in this war—perhaps for the last time anywhere—that strange, magical light which rested once upon the landscape of a young and totally unsophisticated country, whose perfect embodiment the army was. In a way, this army was fighting against reality, just as was Lee’s army. The dream which possessed the land before 1861 was passing away in blood and fire. One age was ending and another was being born, with agony of dissolution and agony of birth terribly mingled; and in the Army of the Potomac—in its background, its coming together, its memories of the American life which it imagined it was fighting to preserve—there was the final expression of an era which is still part of our heritage but which is no longer a part of any living memories.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The Potomac
Book:Mr. Lincoln's Army
Create image

“Buford didn’t dress for respect, he earned it. He didn’t try to get his name in the newspapers, instead he led with deeds that caused his men to follow his guidon with confidence and the full expectation of success.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacGettysburg CampaignBattle Of Gettysburg
Book:The Devils to Pay: John Buford at Gettysburg. a History and Walking Tour.
Create image

“However, in an attempt to rouse the dejected spirits of the troops, he directed that a ration of whiskey be issued to all ranks. Somehow the barrels were brought up in the night and the distribution made next morning. The result, in several cases - for the officers poured liberally and the stuff went into empty stomachs - were spectacular. For example, rival regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts promptly decided the time had come for them to settle a long-term feud, and when a Maine outfit stepped in to try and stop the scuffle, the result was the biggest three-sided fist fight in the history of the world.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The Potomac
Book:The Civil War, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian
Create image

“To Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing and his men, the first sign of Hooker’s intention to abandon the Fredericksburg-Falmouth front came in the form of a telegram received at Second Corps headquarters on June 6, which directed that the soldiers of the corps have three days’ rations in their haversacks, and that all wagons be loaded with stores and the trains put in readiness for any order to move. The order, the telegram stated, “may possibly be given to move early tomorrow.”8”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacGettysburg CampaignAmerican Civil War Biography
Book:Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander
Create image

“Wadsworth was riding at the front of the 20th Massachusetts along the Plank Road when the 8th Alabama fired its first volley (No. 1). The flash and surprise stunned his mount, and with Wadsworth pulling on the reins his horse headed straight for the Confederate lines. The division commander gained control of the horse before it entered the enemy’s ranks and was spurring his mount back toward the Bay Staters when a round of small arms fire exploded around him. One of the bullets slammed into his head and sprayed brain matter onto an aide riding next to him, who maintained enough presence of mind to dismount and catch the general as he fell from his horse. After carefully lowering Wadsworth to the ground, the aide concluded the general had been killed instantly, hopped onto the general’s horse, and galloped to safety.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacOverland Campaign
Book:The Maps of the Wilderness: An Atlas of the Wilderness Campaign, Including all Cavalry Operations, May 2-6, 1864
Create image

“In the thirty days since Grant had first fired upon Lee in the Wilderness, his Army of the Potomac had lost 50,000 men. That same army had lost only twice that—100,000—in all the previous three years of war. A good many of his finest and bravest had fallen; far many more—another 100,000 alone in just that year—had refused to reenlist. Lincoln, stunned, soon pronounced that the “heavens are hung in black.” Across the North, Grants critics only raised their voices further and included the first lady: “Grant is a butcher and not fit to be at the head of an army,” Mary Lincoln protested. “He loses two men to the enemy’s one. He has no management, no regard for life.” Added one Union man, “We were all quick to criticize McClellan’s … fear of the Army of Northern Virginia,” but “anyone that has seen that army fight and march would, were he wise, proceed … with caution and wariness knowing full well that defeat by such an enemy might mean destruction.” Said another critic, “It is foolish and wanton slaughter.”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacOverland Campaign
Book:April 1865: The Month That Saved America
Create image

“As Franklin temporized, another dispatch arrived from McClellan: “It is important to drive in the enemy in your front, but be cautious in doing it until you have some idea of his force. . . . Thus far our success is complete, but let us follow it up closely, but warily.”2”

American Civil WarCivil War Eastern TheaterArmy Of The PotomacAntietam Campaign
Book:The Maps of Antietam: An Atlas of The Antietam (Sharpsburg) Campaign, Including the Battle of South Mountain, September 2 - 20, 1862
Create image