Shelby Foote Quotes

Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy - and it w...

On Lee as commander: He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor.

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.

Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said went far toward confirming one’s belief in the wealth and flexi...

Later they took him to Jackson and that explained it; he was crazy.

Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that’s many fathoms deep. If I’m not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake

Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle blades stirring the air up close to the ceiling but...

They burnt crosses every night all around us, and a man who'll burn what he prays to, he’ll burn anything.

For men who a short time before had been shooting at him and doing all in their power to wreck his cause, I remembered what my father had said about the South bearing within itself the seeds of defeat...

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. Th...

When General Johnston had heard them out, he drew himself up in the saddle, leather creaking, and said quietly: Gentlemen, we shall attack at daylight tomorrow.

They will tell you Shiloh was no cavalry battle; the field was too cut-up with ravines and choked with timber for the usual mounted work. However, none of Forrest's men realized this at the time and w...

They took it for more than it was, or anyhow for more than it said; the container was greater than the thing contained, and Lincoln became at once what he would remain for them, the man who freed the...

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 l...

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 ravin...

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...

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

Not married until 33, Abraham Lincoln said, A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that cannot hurt me.

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.

The trial was two months off. The public was primed. Hardly a day went by that the Stevenson boy didnt run something in the paper. They ate it up. They were anxious to see the show—it’s their only cha...