Chris Wood Quotes

In a very short time the army of Northern Virginia was face to face with the Army of the Potomac.

If you go to Gettysburg and take the time, maybe take a tour, maybe just drive around, read some of the monuments, read some of the plaques, you will come away changed.

I'm so American that I had grandfathers who actually fought a battle against each other.

We will never forget those like my great-grandfather who fought at Vicksburg.

I grew up 60 minutes way from Richmond, in Charlottesville, Virginia and, as a child, I was obsessed with the Civil War. I used to do re-enactments and all that stuff.

The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.

Occasionally, a re-enactment is a fine thing. I love Civil War re-enactments.

All quiet along the Potomac.

If Lee had won, I'd still be a slave.

I have been up to see the [Confederate] Congress, but they do not seem to be able to do anything but eat peanuts and chew tobacco while my men starve.

Robert E. Lee was responsible for the deaths of more American soldiers than Hitler and Tojo.

The war might be at an end this coming fall; but I see no probable end, so long as the present policy is continued. We are on a plantation of thirty-five hundred acres of excellent land, well cultivated, 500 acres in corn, in etc.: numbers of splendid horses, mules, and cattle, and hogs, all of which our army need badly; the owner is in the rebel service, doing all in his power to destroy our lives, while we protect his property.

I was born about 80 years too late. If you were a kid in 1910, the Fourth of July was a big deal. You knew all about the Revolution, and you still had Civil War veterans.

In the great battle of Antietam, still the bloodiest day in American history, Union forces were led by Gen. George McClellan, an incredibly cautious man.

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.

I'm reading "Team of Rivals'' I'll probably ending up reading a bunch of books about the Civil War. But I think my all-time favorite book about the war is the novel, "The Killer Angels'' by Michael Shaara.

Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.

When I read that I had to go to Gettysburg.

The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.

There were 315,000 slave owners in the Union Army (with 200,000 in the Confederate Army) and the men who walked away from the Union Army were adamantly opposed to freeing slaves. We cite these facts and recorded statistics to point out that the principal cause of the war was not the issue of slavery.

Few generals were as brilliant as Robert E. Lee and few battles as titanic -- and puzzling -- as Gettysburg. Why did Lee fail? In Lost Triumph, Tom Carhart offers a bold and provocative new assessment. Agree or disagree, it is sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs.

Every man that lowered our flag was a Democrat.... Every preacher that said slavery was a divine institution was a Democrat. Recollect it! Every man that shot a Union soldier was a Democrat. Every wound borne by you Union soldiers is a souvenir of a Democrat.

I said I would remove him [Gen. George McClellan] if he let Lee's army get away from him and I must do so. He has got the slows.

The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter.

The strength of the rebellion [the Confederacy] is in its military, its army. That army dominates all the country and all the people within its range.