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Book: Mr. Lincoln's Army
Quotes of Book: Mr. Lincoln's Army

Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
And so that generation was deprived of the one element that is essential to the operation of a free society-the ability to assume, in the absence of good proof to the contrary, that men in public life are generally decent, honorable, and loyal.
book-quote dysfunctional-society
Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
What it really means is that the general must understand that he is not a free agent and cannot hope to become one. He has to work within the limitations imposed by the fact that he is working for a democracy, which means that at times he must modify or abandon the soundest military plan and make do with a second-best."
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
And a wild, primitive madness seemed to descend on the men who fought in the cornfield: they went beyond the limits of sanity and endurance at times, Northerners and Southerners alike, until it seems that they tore at each other for the sheer sake of fighting. The
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
was the Civil War term for rookie. The idea was that some of the new recruits were of such fantastic greenness that they did not know the left foot from the right and hence could not be taught to keep time properly or to step off on the left foot as all soldiers should. The drill sergeants, in desperation, had finally realized that these green country lads did at least know hay from straw and so had tied wisps of hay to the left foot and straw to the right foot and marched them off to the chant of "Hay-foot, straw-foot, hay-foot, straw-foot." Hence: straw-foot-rookie, especially a dumb rookie.}
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
Young men then went to war believing all of the fine stories they had grown up with; and if, in the end, their disillusion was quite as deep and profound as that of the modern soldier, they had to fall farther to reach it.
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
The barn by the Roulette house was jammed with wounded men. Screams, prayers, and curses made it a horrible place, with hundreds of anguished men packed together on the straw begging the surgeons to attend to them-surgeons bare-armed and fearsomely streaked and spattered with blood, piles of severed arms and legs lying by the slippery operating tables, the uproar of the battle beating in through the thin walls.
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
On the contrary, I thought he was rather lucky. He carried with him forever the visible sign that he had fought for his country and had been wounded in its service. Probably only a very backward boy could have thought anything of the kind.
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
Kearny had probably seen more fighting than any man on the field. He had served in Mexico as a cavalry captain; had remarked, in youthful enthusiasm, that he would give an arm to lead a cavalry charge against the foe. He got his wish, at the exact price offered, a few days later, leading a wild gallop with flashing sabers and losing his left arm. He once told his servant: "Never lose an arm; it makes it too hard to put on a glove.
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
they put a special meaning on such a word as "patriotism"; it was not something you talked about very much, just a living force that you instinctively responded to.
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
If the hardtack got moldy it was usually thrown away as inedible, but if it just got weevily it was issued anyway. Heating it at the fire would drive the weevils out; more impatient soldiers simply ate it in the dark and tried not to think about it."
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
The whole brigade took a queer, perverse pride in the regimental band of the 6th Wisconsin-not because it was so good, but because it was so terrible. It was able to play only one selection, something called "The Village Quickstep," and its dreadful inefficiency {the colonel referred to it in his memoirs as "that execrable band"} might have been due to the colonel's quaint habit of assigning men to the band not for musical ability but as punishment for misdemeanors-or so, at least, the regiment stoutly believed. The only good thing about the band was its drum major, one William Whaley, who was an expert at high and fancy twirling of his baton. At one review, in camp around Washington, the brigade had paraded before McClellan, who had been so taken with this drum major's "lofty pomposity" {as a comrade described it} that he took off his cap in jovial salute-whereupon the luckless Whaley, overcome by the honor, dropped his baton ignominiously in the mud, so that his big moment became a fizzle.4
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Bruce Catton _ Mr. Lincoln's Army
It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.
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