generals-of-the-union-army

""Wild Bill" was a strange character, just the one which a novelist might gloat over. Me was a Plainsman in every sense of the word, yet unlike any other of his class. In person he was about six feet one in height, straight as the straightest of the warriors whose implacable foe he was; broad shoulders, well-formed chest and limbs, and a face strikingly handsome; a sharp, clear, blue eye, which stared you straight in the face when in conversation; a finely-shaped nose, inclined to be aquiline; a well-turned mouth, with lips only partially concealed by a handsome moustache. His hair and complexion were those of the perfect blond. The former was worn in uncut ringlets falling carelessly over his powerfully formed shoulders. Add to this figure a costume blending the immaculate neatness of the dandy with the extravagant taste and style of the frontiersman, and you have Wild Bill, then as now the most famous scout on the Plains. Whether on foot or on horseback, he was one of the most perfect types of physical manhood I ever saw. Of his courage there could be no question; it had been brought to the test on too many occasions to admit of a doubt. His skill in the use of the rifle and pistol was unerring; while his deportment was exactly the opposite of what might be expected from a man of his surroundings. It was entirely free from all bluster or bravado. He seldom spoke of himself unless requested to do so. His conversation, strange to say, never bordered either on the vulgar or blasphemous. His influence among the frontiersmen was unbounded, his word was law; and many are the personal quarrels and disturbances which he has checked among his comrades by his simple announcement that "this has gone far enough," if need be followed by the ominous warning that when persisted in or renewed the quarreller "must settle it with me." "Wild Bill" is anything but a quarrelsome man; yet no one but himself can enumerate the many conflicts in which he has been engaged, and which have almost invariably resulted in the death of his adversary. I have a personal knowledge of at least half a dozen men whom he has at various times killed, one of these being at the time a member of my command. Others have been severely wounded, yet he always escapes unhurt. On the Plains every man openly carries his belt with its invariable appendages, knife and revolver, often two of the latter. Wild Bill always carried two handsome ivory-handled revolvers of the large size; he was never seen without them. Where this is the common custom, brawls or personal difficulties are seldom if ever settled by blows. The quarrel is not from a word to a blow, but from a word to the revolver, and he who can draw and fire first is the best man. No civil law reaches him; none is applied for. In fact there is no law recognized beyond the frontier but that of "might makes right." Should death result from the quarrel, as it usually does, no coroner’s jury is impanelled to learn the cause of death, and the survivor is not arrested. But instead of these old-fashioned proceedings, a meeting of citizens takes place, the survivor is requested to be present when the circumstances of the homicide are inquired into, and the unfailing verdict of "justifiable," "self-defence," etc., is pronounced, and the law stands vindicated."

""Ah!" said the doctor, in his most complacent manner, "here is the opportunity I have long been waiting for. I have often desired to test and taste the Indian mode of cooking. What do you suppose this is?" holding up the dripping morsel. Unable to obtain the desired information, the doctor, whose naturally good appetite had been sensibly sharpened by his recent exercise á la quadrupède, set to with a will and ate heartily of the mysterious contents of the kettle. "What can this be?" again inquired the doctor. He was only satisfied on one point, that it was delicious — a dish fit for a king. Just then Guerrier, the half-breed, entered the lodge. He could solve the mystery, having spent years among the Indians. To him the doctor appealed for information. Fishing out a huge piece and attacking it with the voracity of a hungry wolf, he was not long in determining what the doctor had supped so heartily upon. His first words settled the mystery: "Why, this is dog." I will not attempt to repeat the few but emphatic words uttered by the heartedly disgusted member of the medical fraternity as he rushed from the lodge."

"The opening of an Indian campaign is ... the signal for the withdrawal of all privileges and enjoyments, such as leaves of absence, visits from Eastern friends, hunting and pleasure parties of all kinds. The reception from the East of all luxuries and delicacies for the table and of all current literature, such as the numerous railroads béing constructed in the West, particularly the two Pacifics, render easy of procurement, ceases; and not only the private soldier but the officer is limited in his mess fare to an indifferent portion of the ordinary ration. Is it probable or reasonable that these objects and results, the principal ones generally, so far as the army as individuals is concerned, would be considered suflicient to render either officers or soldiers “eager to get up an Indian war”? I have yet to make the acquaintance of that officer of the army who, in time of undisturbed peace, desired a war with the Indians. On the contrary, the army is the Indian’s best friend, so long as the latter desires to maintain friendship. It is pleasant at all times, and always interesting, to have a village of peaceable Indians locate their lodges near our frontier posts or camps. The daily visits of the Indians, from the most venerable chief to the strapped pappoose, their rude interchange of civilities, their barterings, races, dances, legends, strange customs, and fantastic ceremonies, all combine to render them far more agreeable as friendly neighbors than as crafty, bloodthirsty enemies."

"You ask me if I will not be glad when the last battle is fought so far as my country is concerned, I, of course, must wish for peace, and will be glad when the war is ended, but if I answer for myself alone, I must say that I shall regret to see the war end and I would be willing, yes glad, to see a battle every day during my life."

": He was a lieutenant colonel. His name was Custer. : I know this name. He killed many warriors. : Oh, yes. Many warriors. : So he was a good general. : No. No, he wasn't a good general. He was arrogant and foolhardy. And he got massacred because he took a single battalion against two thousand angry Indians. : Two thousand Indians? How many men for Custer? : Two hundred and eleven. : I like this General Custer. : He was a murderer who fell in love with his own legend. And his troopers died for it. : I think this is a very good death."

"The most exciting sport I ever engaged in."

"George Brinton McClellan had almost all of the gifts. He was young, sturdy, intelligent, and up to a certain point he was very lucky. A short man with a barrel chest, a handsome face, and the air of one who knew what all of the trumpets meant, he won (without trying much more than was necessary) the adoration and the lasting affection of some very tough fighting men who tended to be most cynical about their generals. He had too much, perhaps, and he had it too soon and too easily; life did not hammer toughness into him until it was too late, and although many men died for him, he never quite understood what their deaths meant or what he could do with their devotion. For a time he deserved his country most ably."

"Soldiers! I have heard that there was danger here. I have come to place myself at your head and to share it with you. I fear now but one thing- that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel. I know that I can rely upon you."

"And, once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted, that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Mannassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty---that we would find the same enemy, and the same, or equal, intrenchments, at either place. The country will not fail to note---is now noting---that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy, is but the story of Manassas repeated. I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act."

"Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I assure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed. Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse.""

"No general surpassed him in audacity and aggressiveness. If McClellan took no risks, Lee perhaps took too many. He preferred the bold offensive, seeking in true Napoleonic fashion to destroy, not merely defeat, the enemy army. Dedicated to winning a battle of annihilation, he sometimes imprudently continued attacking beyond any reasonable prospect of success. Lee also needed to broaden his view of the war. Exhibiting a narrow parochialism, he believed Virginia was the most important war zone. He underestimated the problems Confederate commanders faced in the western and trans-Mississippi theaters and the significance of those theaters for southern survival. Yet Lee served the South well. Although costing the Confederacy dearly, his victories against great odds buoyed Confederate morale and depressed the North. Furthermore, Lee's emphasis on his native state was not entirely emotional. Richmond, the South's primary industrial center, acquired great symbolic value, and the Virginia countryside furnished men, mounts, food, and other logistical assets."

"After you left, I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington, and Manassas Junction; and part of this even, was to go to Gen. Hooker's old position. Gen. Banks' corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted, and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strausburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the upper Potomac, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, (or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahanock, and sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of Army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell."

"I went to the White House shortly after tea where I found "the original gorilla," about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!"

"Born in Pennsylvania, McClellan was thirty-five when the war began. He had been graduated from West Point in 1846, number two in his class, a magnetic and brilliant young man; he won three brevets for gallant and meritorious conduct in the Mexican War, served as War Department observer in the Crimea in the middle fifties, and then resigned from the Army, as a captain, to go into business. In business he did well, had been successful as vice-president of the growing Illinois Central Railroad, and in the spring of 1861 was president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio & Mississippi. He found himself, in the middle of May, major general of volunteers (and, a short time afterward, major general of regulars as well) commanding the Department of the Ohio- the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, along with a part of western Pennsylvania and the dissident section of western Virginia. It was up to him to organize and then to use the troops raised in this area, and he did these things with smooth competence."

"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Mannassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And now allow me to ask "Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Mannassas Junction, to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops?" This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade."

"Ben-Hur remembered to have heard a cry in answer, as it were, to the scream of the Nazarene in his last moment; but he had not looked to see from whom it had proceeded; and ever after he believed the spirit of the Egyptian accompanied that of his Master over the boundary into the kingdom of Paradise. The idea rested not only upon the cry heard, but upon the exceeding fitness of the distinction. If faith were worthy reward in the person of Gaspar, and love in that of Melchior, surely he should have some special meed who through a long life had so excellently illustrated the three virtues in combination—Faith, Love, and Good Works."

"Mans can't make moons"

"Judge Mattocks has been very successful since he became the head of the Probate Court, largely owing to his disposition of impartiality, and earnest desire to promote the best interests of all parties concerned. As a public speaker, General Mattocks stands in the front rank."

"The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Major Charles Porter Mattocks, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 6 April 1865, while serving with 17th Maine Infantry, in action at Deatonsville (Sailor's Creek), Virginia. Major Mattocks displayed extraordinary gallantry in leading a charge of his regiment which resulted in the capture of a large number of prisoners and a stand of colors."

"When the two Regts. were panic-stricken they [his command] stood by me like heroes … Would I abandon men who showed themselves willing to give their own lives to save mine?"

"Considering the fact that the armies of the Northern and Southern States participated in the hardest fought battles of the nineteenth century, and the additional fact that Maine is the only State which has placed two regiments of different arms of the service at the head of the list in each of these aims, it seems but fitting that, as we proudly look back upon Maine's record in the great struggle for national life, we should be reminded of the career of a Maine soldier, who did much to render famous in the war the name of his native State."

"[Command] is one of the easiest things in the world if a man only is lavish of the immense power which is by the military code granted to a Regimental commander."

"I am very sure that next to Mr. [Nathan] Webb in all pints that you would regard most essential Genl. Charles P. Mattocks of Portland is the man fittest and worthiest for the place. His character, ability, and professional standing, political honesty and manly support of the principles you are endeavoring to establish for the well-being of the Country, would render his appointment a tonic for public opinion and sentiment in political affairs."

"General Mattocks was a sound lawyer; careful and conscientious as a counsellor, able and forcible at the Bar, brilliant as a public speaker. His personality always made a strong impression. Genuine and generous as a man; faithful and warm-hearted; broad-minded and judicious as a citizen, frank and fearless for the right as he saw it, he was an example of true manhood"

"Ordinarily, he is of a quiet, modest disposition; but when in battle he becomes tiger like, fearing nothing and becoming terrible in action."

"[A soldier with] a record never surpassed, and hardly equaled in the history of this or any other war."

"Wounds are nothing new to this gallant officer, who bears ugly scars about his person, the tokens of Rebel attentions."

"Men who thought a company was quite enough for them to command properly at the beginning (of the Siege of Vicksburg), would have made good regimental or brigade commanders; most of the brigade commanders were equal to the command of a division, and one, Ransom, would have been equal to the command of a corps at least."

"One of the few 'avowed anti-slavery officers in the army', Hunter had caused a huge commotion only a month before when he had announced unilaterally that all rebel-owned slaves under his jurisdiction were to be 'forever free.' Abraham Lincoln, who knew and liked Hunter, had sternly countermanded him; the president insisted that 'commanders in the field' could not make such decisions... Hunter envisioned a different result. He wanted former slaves to have voting rights... The old warrior could not have been happy at the ultimate outcome."

"The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and marvellous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic — displaying great natural capacities in acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers who have had charge of them, that, in the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries — fully equal."

"From the beginning I urged upon the Government, in the strongest terms, the enlistment of negro troops, the former slaves of the rebels, not only as adding to the number and efficiency of our own forces, but chiefly on account of its depriving the enemy of just so much labor in their fields."

"The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free."

"You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;–liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;–liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;–liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;–liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty–the liberty to do wrong–which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell."

"[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them."

"[T]o Major-General George H. Thomas and the officers and soldiers under his command for their skill and dauntless courage, by which the rebel army under General Hood was signally defeated and driven from the state of Tennessee."

"During the whole war his services were transcendent, winning the first substantial victory at Mill Springs in Kentucky, January 20th, 1862, participating in all the campaigns of the West in 1862-3-4, and finally, December 16th, 1864 annihilating the army of Hood, which in mid winter had advanced to Nashville to besiege him."

"I was always a friend of Southern rights, but an enemy of Southern wrongs."

"The true touchstone of civil liberty is not that all men are equal but that every man has the right to be the equal of every other man – if he can."

"I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon any other or different grounds of right than those adopted by your authorities, in claiming the negroes as property, because I understand that your fabric of opposition to the Government of the United States has the right of property in man as its corner-stone."

"Will you suffer your soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man? You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers or sons languishing in your prisons."

"Let the colored people maintain their rights as citizens with dignity [and] forbearance, under the wrongs which will be put upon them by prejudice and ignorance. Let them show by industry and frugality and obedience to the laws that they are worthy of those rights, and I am sure, as the sun shines on the just and the unjust, they shall attain every right which belongs to the citizens of the United States."

"That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him citizen."

"The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one."

"Kit Carson was a man of great energy and decision of character, alert, poised, calm in danger, and among the keenest, shrewdest, and bravest of experienced frontiersmen. In knowledge of his craft he ranked with such leaders as Bridger, St. Vrain, the Bent "boys," , and others among his associates. Yet his appearance was unheroic enough—short and stocky, grey-eyed, blond-haired, and bow-legged. He had however those qualities of modesty, sobriety, and strict veracity not proverbially common among the trappers of his day. His kindliness and generosity caused at least three "old timers,"—Oliver Wiggens, "Billy" Ryus, and "Cap't" Drannan, to regard him as their foster father. Those who knew him well,—General Sherman, General [James Fowler] Rusling, General Beale, General Fremont, Col. [DeWitt Clinton] Peters and a host of other friends,—respected, honored and loved him. His name will "carry on" as long as our highways and railways follow his trails and our cities cover his ground where he broke the brush for his campfires."

"Carson really was a most remarkable man and the fact that he enjoyed the respect and consideration of the group of men who controlled affairs in New Mexico during the last decade of his career is proof enough of his capacity. The record shows that the volunteers, led by a man without a military education but long experienced in Indian life and warfare, working harmoniously with a commanding general of pronounced military prowess, subjugated the Navajo, a feat that had failed of accomplishment when attempted by others of careful military training and of undoubted courage."

"Between the years 1827 and 1828, three Madison County natives saw each other and worked together in far off Taos, New Mexico. They were Christopher (Kit) Carson, Mathew Kinkead and William Wolfskill. ...When Kit was about 1 1/2, the Carsons moved west to Missouri. Soon after his sixteenth birthday, Kit ran away from home, following a wagon train that ended up in Taos. Carson's first job in Taos was working for Mathew Kinkead... an early Santa Fe trader, one of Taos's first distillers... and a founder of Fort Pueblo. ...although Kinkead opened his home in Taos to the fellow Madison Countian, Kit never seemed to like or speak well of him."

"When Carson was organizing the First Regiment of New Mexico Volunteers, and was at Fort Union, he was a member of our mess, which consisted of Captain P.W.L. Plympton, now deceased, Captain (General) A.B. Carey, now retired, two or three others, and myself. I was only a government clerk. In the cold winter evenings, over a roaring fire-place and a steaming bowl of punch we smoked our pipes and told stories. Carson was usually reticent and sparing in speech, but whenever he got warmed up a little with a sip or two of punch his tongue would loosen itself somewhat and he would join in the "story telling." He had one account of a buffalo hunt, to the effect that somewhere down on the lower Cimarron, on a scout with General Carleton, the soldiers kept returning empty-handed to camp, with reports of poor shooting and bad luck, etc. Carson told them that he would wager he could go out and kill ten buffalo with ten balls. He went out and killed the ten buffalo with nine balls, having got two of the animals in line and killed both with the one shot!"

"A man of the most kindly and gentle spirit; unassuming, quiet, and the last person that one would suppose to be possessed of qualities that made him famous... He was a very genial man, and there were one or two funny stories that I used to tell him that amused him greatly, especially one that described a fight between two camp-women at Fort Union. I lived in Santa Fe the winter of 1863 and 1864, and he was there at the time, and almost always when I met him he would stop and make me tell him that story. He also used to lend me his horse to ride. It was a very ordinary looking yellow horse, and a pacer, and by no means the prancing steed that he is always pictured as mounted upon. He was so unassuming and kind-hearted that he won me completely, for I was only a boy of seventeen or eighteen, and to have Kit Carson notice me and seem attracted to my yarns meant a great deal to me."

"Kit Carson before the war could but write his name, and read but a word or two. But from the time when he went out as an army officer with other army officers, by association and by application he learned more, so that when I was last with him he was a fair reader and writer, but was not 'stuck on the job.' I noticed quite an improvement in his dress, his speech and his whole being. The war developed him, so that in my opinion there were two Kit Carsons— one before the war, and one after."

"Kit Carson first came from Missouri to Santa Fé in 1826; afterwards going to Taos, where he studied Spanish with [Mathew] Kinkead, and through all the travels and vicissitudes of his after life, retained that as his home."