confederate-states-army-soldiers

"To me it is an honor as well as a duty to defend him when so unjustly attacked, for in common with my fellow-Catholics all over the world I recognize in him the Vicar on earth of the Eternal Prince of Peace. I do not expect that my many non-Catholic friends will accept our belief, which is, however, so well grounded on the inspired words of Holy Scripture, regarding the Primacy of the Pope; but I would ask if it is too much to expect that they will do justice to his untiring efforts to secure peace and relieve some of the very distressing features of the war."

"War had become a reality; they were tired of it. A law had been passed... called the conscript act. ... From this time on till the end of the war, a soldier was simply a machine, a conscript. ... All our pride and valor had gone, and we were sick of war and the Southern Confederacy."

"He was loved, respected, admired; yea, almost worshipped, by his troops. I do not believe there was a soldier in his army but would gladly have died for him. With him everything was his soldiers, and the newspapers, criticizing him at the time, said, "He would feed his soldiers if the country starved.""

"Well, on the fatal morning... the sun rose clear and cloudless, the heavens seemed made of brass, and the earth of iron, and as the sun began to mount towards the zenith, everything became quiet, and no sound was heard save a peckerwood on a neighboring tree, tapping on its old trunk, trying to find a worm for his dinner. We all knew it was but the dead calm that precedes the storm."

"Farewell, old fellow! We privates loved you because you made us love ourselves."

"We were willing to go anywhere, or to follow anyone who would lead us. We were anxious to flee, fight, or fortify. I have never seen an army so confused and demoralized. The whole thing seemed to be tottering and trembling."

"America has no north, no south, no east, no west; the sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. ... We are one and undivided."

"I always shot at privates. It was they that did the shooting and killing, and if I could kill or wound a private, why, my chances were so much the better. I always looked upon officers as harmless personages."

"He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and drop it himself."

"A law was made... allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home. It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of "rich man's war, poor man's fight." The glory of the war, the glory of the South, the glory and the pride of our volunteers had no charms for the conscript."

"I turned suddenly at the terrible concussion caused by the proximity of the shell’s trail of death and saw that man standing headless, with bayonet drawn as in the charge, his blood spurting high in the air from the jugular vein, and it seemed to me an hour before he reeled and fell, still holding on to his gun. To me that was one of the most horrible sights of the period. I went back and looked at him after the fight to assure myself that it was not a dream of frenzy in those exciting moments. He was there as I had seen him fall, and more than 40 years have passed with that picture forever impressed on my memory."

"He sustain[ed] himself in the front rank of the soldier and gentlemen until the moment of his death. Bounding forward at the order ‘Charge!’ he was stricken down in the front rank, and without a struggle yielded up his young life."

"Wondering who it was who stood foremost in a charge of a Louisiana brigade with fixed bayonet, advancing up the hill and across a clover patch, when a shell from a gunboat in the bay took off his head and spattered his brains and blood all about the uniform of Captain Moseley, himself advancing through the thick rain of shot with his Georgia brigade."

"While his [Private Jemison’s] parents knew where he died, it was many years before they knew the details. One day my father introduced himself to a man as they sat before a hotel. The man repeated the name and said it was the first time he had heard that name since 1862; that a young soldier of that name had been fighting beside him at the Battle of Malvern Hill and been decapitated by a cannon ball. Questions proved it was Uncle Edwin."