Charles Carleton Coffin Quotes
Plainly, the day is approaching when the Army of the Potomac, unfortunate at times in the past, derided, ridiculed, but now triumphant through unparalleled hardship, endurance, courage, persistency, will plant its banners on the defenses of Richmond, crumble the Rebel army beyond the possibility of future cohesion, and, in conjunction with the forces in other departments, crush out the last vestige of the Rebellion.
The Virginia Campaign of May 1864 was clearly the beginning of the end of the war. This was clear at the time, not only to the military leaders of both sides, but also to the media and thence the general public in the North. At the beginning of the war the Army of the Potomac, the largest Union Army was commanded by McClellan whose concerns were with his own political career and not winning the war. He had an aversion to heavy fighting and did not see the war strategically as Lincoln, Grant and Sherman did: To cripple the capacity of the South to wage war. So the early history of the Army of the Potomac was a series of undecisive battles which were either standoffs or the Confederates won despite the much larger and better armed and equipped Union army. As soon as McClellan was replaced, things began to turn around and when Grant was selected for Command of all Union Troops, the Army of the Potomac performed much better, including taking Richmond, the Confederate Capital.
Charles Carleton Coffin, 1832-1896, Journalist & Civil War Correspondent, Profile of General Grant, “The May Campaign in Virginia”, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1864
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That is the way he was killed. The phrase, “We are bound to believe that, anyhow” indicates that Stuart really realized how futile the Southern war effort would be but loyalty and patriotism required him to suspend his rational belief structure.
Two days later Lee surrendered at Richmond, and the Civil War was over. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated. He died the next day.
The ultimatum was rejected, Cromwell’s forces took the town and massacred the defenders as well as many civilians. See {632366}.
Warren was the Washington correspondent and Editorial Writer of the Tribune at the time. Many people erroneously attributed this editorial to Horace Greeley, the Tribune owner or Charles Dana, the Managing Editor
This is one of the documented examples of the use of the phrase “God is on our side.”
Committee of the Congress. This was the prevailing Congressional and public view except for the South which had coalesced around an intellectual rationalization. See {618013}.
This is an important quotation because it helps to dispel a myth that the Civil War was not about slavery. That was the reason that the rebelling states gave for secession, but apologists for the Confederacy have claimed that the average soldier on both sides did not care about slavery. (Two thirds of the Southern Soldiers came from families that did not own slaves; nonetheless it was clear that the main motivation of the Confederate Soldier was to protect the institution of slavery, while that of the Union soldiers was to destroy slavery.) Professor Manning found this in her book: What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War.
Charles Carleton Coffin was an American journalist, war correspondent, author and politician.
