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Confederate States Of America Quotes

Browse 27 quotes about Confederate States Of America.

Confederate States Of America Quotes

“The reluctance of southern planters to grow food stemmed from more than simply greed and economic self-interest. A major concern involved what to do with their slaves, who would have more time on their hands if not out tending cotton. Planting corn exacted much time during the planting and cultivation stages, but came nowhere near matching the long cotton-picking season, which typically lasted four and often five full months. As one Georgia newspaper put it, 'No grain crop in this climate needs cultivation more than four months of the year, the remainder of the working season is unemployed. Can the farmer afford to keep his negroes, horses, and other capital idle and 'eating their heads off' for the balance of the season?”

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Book:Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History
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“Okay, first of all, they don't "consider" Jefferson Davis racist, he was President of the Confederacy, his racism is not up for any sort of fucking debate. Despite the narrative of some Southern Revisionists, the Civil War was fought almost entirely on the issue of slavery. If you're the leader of the, "we think black people should be slaves" side of that war, then you're a racist — not "racist, question mark," not even "racist, period," but "racist, exclamation point" — racist!”

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Author:T.J. Kirk
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“The mythology serves purposes darker than sentiment, nothing more so than the currently popular, and arrantly nonsensical, assertion that Lee freed his inherited slaves in 1862 before the war was over, while Grant kept his until the Thirteenth Amendment freed them in 1865. The subtext is transparent. If Southerner Lee freed his slaves while Northerner Grant kept his, then secession and the war that followed can hardly have had anything to do with slavery and must instead have been over the tariff or state rights, or some other handy pretext invented to cloak slavery’s pivotal role.”

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Book:Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged
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“Grant was forty-two and Lee fifty-seven, Grant at the peak of health and energy, while Lee feared his weakening body and lagging faculties. Each was defending his notion of home. Grant by now was the most popular man in the Union, arguably more so even than Lincoln. Lee was easily the most important man in the Confederacy, his popularity and influence, had he chosen to use it, far outstripping Davis’s. Unquestionably, they were at this moment the preeminent military figures in America, and arguably the world.”

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Book:Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged
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“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.”

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Book:The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
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“Nashville was a prize. Johnston had left in a hurry, abandoning huge quantities of supplies — half a million pounds of bacon, much bread and flour, and bales of new tents, the latter greatly welcomed by the Federals, who had left their own tents far behind them. The Federals were having their first experience in occupying a Confederate capital, and they found numerous timid citizens who were ready to turn their coats and cuddle up to the invaders: dignified gentlemen who called on generals to explain that they personally had always been Union men, to identify leading Rebels in the community, to tell where Confederate supplies had been hidden, and in general to make themselves useful.”

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Book:This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War
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“There is no other legend quite like the legend of the Confederate fighting man. He reached the end of his haunted road long ago. He fought for a star-crossed cause and in the end he was beaten, but as he carried his slashed red battle flag into the dusky twilight of the Lost Cause he marched straight into a legend that will live as long as the American people care to remember anything about the American past. - Bruce Catton”

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Author:Bruce Catton
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“There is no other legend quite like the legend of the Confederate fighting man. He reached the end of his haunted road long ago. He fought for a star-crossed cause and in the end he was beaten, but as he carried his slashed red battle flag into the dusky twilight of the Lost Cause he marched straight into a legend that will live as long as the American people care to remember anything about the American past.”

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Author:Bruce Catton
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“While President Jefferson Davis in Richmond and his own soldiers continued to support him with unwavering trust, Gen. Lee wrestled with his own demons, including his ill-fated invasion of Pennsylvania, which had been successful through the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. Other more tangible challenges included his ongoing concern about the well-being of his men due to a lack of adequate supplies, and by his own lingering health problems. His “violent back pains” were probably the result of the chronic heart problems that would kill him in 1870.10”

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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
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“by spring 1862 it became universal throughout Confederate regiments for the soldiers to elect their leaders from colonel down to sergeants, the very imposition of military democracy that would lead some to bemoan the demagoguery and wire-pulling with the men in order to seek election.”

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Book:Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America
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“Probably the biggest laugh of all that rainy night was at the expense of Private T.C. Green of the Second Regiment. Before the battle Green had been outspoken in the number of Federals he intended killing, and at day's end went through the camp recounting how many of the enemy he had shot before something went wrong with his gun. When a messmate examined the weapon, he found that the gun had not been fired at all, but was full of unexploded charges. In his excitement Green had gone through the motions of loading and firing, but had omitted some essentials, such as changing caps and pulling the trigger, and hence had done absolutely no harm to the enemy.”

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Book:The Stonewall Brigade
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“The Army of Northern Virginia was also developing its own distinctive character. It had a harder, more tragic fate, and yet there is more laughter in its legend - as if, in some unaccountable way, it worried less. Out of hardship, intermittent malnutrition, and desperately-won victories it was creating a lean, threadbare jauntiness. Beneath this was the great Characteristic which it derived from its commander - the resolute belief that it could not really be beaten no matter what the odds might be. It had paid many lives for that conviction and it would pay many more before it reached the last turn in the road, but what it got seems to have been worth the price.”

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Book:Terrible Swift Sword
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“The Army of Northern Virginia kept moving, one heavy foot after another, marching through a trance. Hour after hour it diminished. Its line of march now was marked as it had never been marked now - by hundreds and hundreds of abandoned muskets, some just dropped by the roadside, other standing butt-upward, bayonets thrust in the ground: weapons discarded by men who had given up and drifted out of the ranks. Many of these men, beaten and weaponless, continued to tramp along with the army, staying where Lee was because he was the only man they could be sure about in their disintegrating world.”

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Book:Never Call Retreat
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“Local commanders went to bizarre lengths to prevent mistakes in identification during the early stages of the war. Realizing that many of the Federal troops wore gray while his own 33rd Virginia wore blue, "Stonewall" Jackson issued an order before the 1st Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) directing his men to identify themselves by tying strips of white cloth around their arms or hats. So as to make absolutely sure that no mistakes were made, his men were further directed to strike their left breasts with their right hands while simultaneously shouting "Our homes!" immediately they encountered an unknown unit. According to one disgruntled soldier, who presumably declined to take part in this somewhat lunatic theater, the commanders had "failed to tell us that while we were going through this Masonic performance we [were thus giving] the other fellow an opportunity to blow our brains out, if we had any." (page 48)”

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Book:The Confederate Army Volume 2
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“Sam Watkins knew what it was like to march day after day, half starved and half clothed, in an army that looked like it was composed of homeless people but, in fact, contained some of the bravest and most dangerous warriors on the face of the earth. Soldiers on both sides knew what it was like to watch a seemingly endless wave of men come toward you across a field, intent in taking your life, or to charge a fortified line and see all your officers killed and your friends shot to pieces all around you. Shortly the survivors of the Army of Tennessee would also know what it was like to go home to a devastated country and try to put their lives back together. For the most part, the men on both sides were average folks, trying to get by in turbulent times, take care of their own and survive with a little dignity.”

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Book:The Battle of Franklin: When the Devil Had Full Possession of the Earth
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“Among the Confederates killed in this evening encounter in the village was Pvt. Jesse Hutchins of the 5th Alabama Battalion. He enlisted on April 15, 1861, in Livingston, Alabama, and had survived four years of war, only to die in the final few hours.”

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Book:To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place, and the Surrenders of the Confederacy
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“The Stonewall Brigade was a fine fighting unit proud to call themselves Jackson's 'Foot Cavalry', but prouder still of the title Stonewall which they shared with their leader, a title which was borne unofficially after Bull Run and officially as has been seen, following Chancellorsville. They proved themselves in the Valley Campaign to be among the greatest marchers of all time. They were the stoutest of fighters as their casualty lists substantiate. It may truly be said that the Stonewall Brigade, like the Tenth Legion of Caesar and the Old Guard of Napoleon, has made its name forever famous.”

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Book:The Stonewall Brigade
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“The doctor finished his work, and the staff lifted him up, helped him to a wagon, an ambulance that had been brought up. he was helped aboard, sat on a thin mattress, and the driver saw his face, recognized him, snatched his hat from his head and held it against his chest as he began to cry, " Oh, Lord, what has happened to General Lee?" There was an embarrassed pause, and Lee looked at the man, surprised at the outburst. "Soldier," he said calmly, "I have been inconvenienced, that's all. It is a small price for the inconvenience we have given General Pope.”

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Book:Gods and Generals
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“Some historians believe that the Wilderness could have been as great a victory for Lee as that of Chancellorsville a year before. The difference was the absence of both Stonewall Jackson and Lee's characteristic aggressiveness. As indicated earlier, a recent historian believed Lee put his troops in motion a day too late and when he did, he issued contradictory orders to his lieutenants, Ewell and Hill . . . Gordon Rhea went a bit further in his indictment of Lee. He took issue with the commonly held belief that Lee had "trapped Grant in the Wilderness". "He was merely the fortunate beneficiary of sloppy Federal planning and reconnaissance." He went on the write that "his failure to take affirmative steps to impede Grant's progress or to accelerate his own army's response exposed the Confederates to peril." Rhea bluntly noted that "Lee made several decisions during the battle which put his army and his cause in serious jeopardy." Perhaps Lee's most serious shortcoming during the battle was his inability to coordinate the two wings of his army, and as a result they fought as independent entities.”

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Book:The Maps of the Wilderness: An Atlas of the Wilderness Campaign, Including all Cavalry Operations, May 2-6, 1864
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“By the afternoon of 30 August, Brig. Gen. William Starke's Louisiana Brigade of Jackson's Division had begun to run very low on ammunition. Then around 3.00 pm the men of John Hatch's Federal Brigade advanced on the Louisiana troops who were defending a section of the unfinished railroad near the "Deep Cut". Despite heavy fire Hatch's men pressed forward. A number of the Southern infantrymen eventually ran out of cartridges and rather than stand idly by they began throwing stones at the advancing Yankees. The Confederate line was never in serious danger; Porter's attack had already spent itself and the Louisianians were speedily reinforced by C.W. Field's Brigade of Virginians. However, the symbolism of the event was too powerful to ignore and became on of the most famous of the war.”

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Book:Second Manassas 1862: Robert E Lee’s greatest victory
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“The whole scene so reeked of penny romance that it bordered on the ludicrous . . . It was all really happening, but more like fiction come to life, a Waverly novel gone mad. Years later, Mark Twain would only half in jest propose that the American Civil War was to be blamed on Sir Walter Scott, that the people of the South had somehow persuaded themselves that the mythical era of gallant knights and fair damsels of Ivanhoe had come to life in Dixie.”

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Book:Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War
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