I never claimed a victory, though I stated that Lee was defeated in his efforts to destroy my army. –Gen. George G. Meade, Union commander at Gettysburg
The army did all it could. I feel I required of it impossibilities. But it responded to the call nobly and cheerfully, and though it did not win a victory it conquered a success. . . . As it was, victory trembled in the balance for three days, and the battle resulted in the infliction of as great an amount of injury as was received and in frustrating the Federal campaign for the season. –R.E. Lee on Gettysburg
The United States are entering into the revolutionary phase. —Karl Marx, 1866, on “Reconstruction”
Maybe I’ve been trying to out-think something that doesn’t think. –Havilah Babcock on bass fishing
Mitt Romney is a statesman, Maya Angelou is a poet, and I am an Olympic pole- vault medalist. –Clyde Wilson
I am not obsessed with the War between the States. I am too busy getting ready for the next one. –Florence King
Consolidators, supremacists, and conquerors, however, will all equally disregard any instrument, however solemn and explicit, by which ambition and avarice will be restrained and the happiness of mankind improved. –John Taylor of Caroline
An American president can wreck his country and blow up the world, but he cannot recreate either of them. –Chilton Williamson
Simply put, there is no more creative an act than creating a new nation. –Sean Connery on Scottish independence
No man was ever more justly hanged. –Nathaniel Hawthorne on John Brown
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed . . . . –Isaiah, 10: 1
The smell of sulfur is thick in the air. –Robert M. Peters
