Archive | December 2012
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In his chamber, weak and dying, While the Robber Baron lay, Loud, without, his men were crying, “Shorter hours and better pay!”
We have all been told that California was dragged kicking and screaming into the United States as the fulfillment of a crazed sense of empire as the behest of the religious zealots of manifest destiny. The less than glorious truth – if no less venal truth – is that the railroads needed a western terminus […]
I had known General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any entrenchments he was given to hold… U. S. Grant
There are some diehard moonlight and magnolia Southerners who will point to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and J. E. B. Stuart and conclude that the Southern armies were all led by military geniuses of the highest moral rectitude – just as much popular history declares for the canonization of Lincoln and waits for […]
Merry Christmas from Dixie
To look at him he might inspire some with the notion of a nineteenth century cleric turned poet but would hardly exude confidence as a military chaplain. That was exactly what he was during the War for Southern Independence and after that tragic war he turned his talents to poetry and produced several small volumes […]
There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare… Sun Tzu
Shades of blue and gray : an introductory military history of the Civil War Columbia : University of Missouri Press, c 1997 Herman Hattaway United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Campaigns Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. xii, 281 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Clean, tight and strong binding […]
We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which God has placed in our power… the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave… If this be treason, make the most of it! Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry is often portrayed as a firebrand and a radical and very little could be farther from the truth. He was a founding father given to flights of rhetoric but that may have come from his training as an attorney. He was also a successful planter who became a governor of Virginia and was […]
You may take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection… Robert E. Lee
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the survivors of so many hard-fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last that I have consented to this result from no distrust […]
I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy… James Longstreet
Hardtack and coffee : Soldier’s Life in the Civil War Old Saybrook, CT, Konecky & Konecky, John D. Billings ; illustrated by Charles W. Reed United States. Army. Military life Hardcover. Originally published by Boston, Hall & Whiting, 1881, as, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery in the War of the […]
If I fulfill this path may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come…
Certainly Stout should qualify as having fulfilled the Hippocratic oath and having been entitled to its benefice. As if to give the lie to McPherson’s whine in his latest book that historians are writing “more and more, about less and less” we have Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein’s study of the mobile Confederate hospitals and the doctor […]
The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur… Aristotle
Yet, if God wills that (this war) continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword… Abraham Lincoln And thereby the problem with rhetoric that […]
We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding… John Marshall
Lenin used to say that whenever someone spoke of culture he reached for his revolver and the same statement applies to people who speak of the “spirit” of things. Whenever you hear the word “spirit” invoked you may be sure that the argument will be long on conjecture and short on fact. This is the […]
Deo Vindice 