Union Army Quotes
The Civil War produced more deaths than all other American wars put together. Lee’s skill and gentlemanly demeanor subdue the fact that his treasonous efforts caused more American soldiers to die than the entire Second World War—and yet some Americans regard him as a hero while others see him as a traitor.
While Lincoln was morally opposed to slavery, at the time the Civil War was not going well for the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation caused the South great distress in terms of practicality and their morale. The slaves if they escaped could come to a Union State and would be forever free. The South would lose labor that they could ill afford to lose as well as they were forced to devote more white manpower to keeping the slaves in bondage. While most people think the Proclamation freed all the slaves, it did not; it only freed slaves in the rebellious Southern states. Border states such as Maryland, not in rebellion, could keep their slaves legally and did until they were freed later.
When George B. McClellan was commander of the Union army, he maintained a very conservative military strategy and would not initiate any attacks. Lincoln wrote:
At this point, there had hardly been any fighting and no outrages or war crimes were yet committed by either side. These would come later—more on the Confederate side as they did not want to take the limited resources they had from their troops to fulfil abstract obligations to prisoners of war or to civilians. A few deliberately chose to use terror tactics. The Union troops also at various points in the war got out of hand and looted personal property of civilians. But at this point, this proclamation was just lies and propaganda.
It is the quotee’s thesis that these leaders and many others adopted deliberate affectation to their dress for the dual political purpose of easy public recognition and fitting an image of individuality but short of deviance.
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.
The national troops acquired a confidence … at Belmont, that did not desert them throughout the war.
The battle had little strategic value, but was very significant as the Western Union troops gained an espirit de corps and a battle tested confidence.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Much of the South was so insular that people knew nothing about the notion of abolition and just assumed that no one would ever consider freeing the slaves. Many never knew that it was the South that first fired on the Union troops and flag. If the North won the war, the assumption was that Northerners would then own the plantations and the valuable slaves. In reality, while all slaves were emancipated in the South, very few plantations and farms were confiscated from their Southern owners by Northerners despite the fact that there was political pressure in the North to confiscate the land of all rebels who had committed treason and use the value to repay the Union bonds and care for the wounded Union veterans and the widows of dead Union Soldiers. Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
