Commanding Generals And Chiefs Of Staff Of The United States Army

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The former president is inciting violence against the nation's top general. America’s response is distracted and numb."

"If you can't get in shape in 24 months, then maybe you should hit the road."

"Across the Potomac River at Quarters 6, inside his second-floor, top secret Sensitive Compartmented Information facility, surrounded by multiple secure video screens connected to the White House and the world, Chairman Milley was still trying to sort out the meaning of the January 6 riot... The conventional wisdom, which had settled into Washington, was that there had been warnings. But Milley knew the internet chatter lacked coherence and did not provide the specific, credible intelligence that could avert a catastrophe. It had been a grave U.S. intelligence failure, comparable to the missed warnings prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and to Pearl Harbor, and exposed glaring gaps and weaknesses in the American system. What did Milley and others miss? What did they not understand? Milley, ever the historian, thought of the little remembered 1905 revolution in Russia. The uprising had failed, but it had set the stage for the successful 1917 revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1917 revolution, had later called the 1905 revolution "The Great Dress Rehearsal." Had January 6 been a dress rehearsal?"

"What can I add that has not already been said? A person [Trump] that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all 'suckers' because 'there is nothing in it for them.' A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because 'it doesn't look good for me.' A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America's defense are 'losers' and wouldn't visit their graves in France. A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us."

"General Mark Milley is a big boy. When he isn’t selling out America to the Chinese, lying about the murder of random Afghan civilians, and undermining the elected president of the United States, it is clear the man enjoys a lap or two (or three) around the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet."

"Trump, the Napoleon of Mar-a-Lago, knew little about history. But like the French emperor banished to Elba, his aspirations for a comeback could not be ruled out. History is full of similarly improbable might-have-beens. Just because no American president before or since Grover Cleveland has managed the feat of returning to office once cast out of it does not mean it cannot happen. After Napoleon reclaimed the throne and was finally defeated once and for all at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the victorious British general, the Duke of Wellington, summed up the twelve-hour fight. It was, he wrote a friend, "the nearest-run thing you ever saw." John Kelly thought of Waterloo when he would tell the story about the time Trump almost blew up the NATO alliance at a Brussels summit less than twenty miles away from where the famous battle took place. "That was a very close-run thing," Kelly would say. Mark Milley thought of the famous quote about Waterloo when he considered how nearly the country came to losing its democracy altogether. "It was a very close-run thing," he told an associate. After it was all done and over, Milley believed that Trump had tried something never tried before in the 230 years of the republic- to illegitimately hold on to power."

"Mark Milley, who led perhaps the most embarrassing moment in American history with his grossly incompetent implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, costing many lives, leaving behind hundreds of American citizens, and handing over BILLIONS of dollars of the finest military equipment ever made, will be leaving the military next week. This will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate! This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!"

"[You] have become a team. And you're going to be drawing upon each other for the rest of your lives."

"We have challenges to be sure, but the military has been and remains the largest meritocracy in the world. We promote, we advance and we select based on your knowledge, your skills, your attributes and the content of your character. We are stronger together. Diversity builds a better team and readiness."

"Globally, there's an increase in nationalism and authoritarian governments, regional arms races and unresolved territorial claims, ethnic and sectarian disputes and an attempt by some countries to return to an 18th-century concept of balance of power politics with spheres of influence."

"In your world, you're going to have to optimize yourselves for urban combat, not rural combat. That has huge implications for intelligence collection, vehicles, weapons design, development, logistics, camo and all of the other aspects of our progression."

"Milley: Look, I'm a soldier. I've been faithful and loyal to the Constitution of the United States for 44-and-a-half years. And my family and I have sacrificed greatly for this country, and my mother and father before them. And, you know, as much as these comments are directed at me, it's also directed at the institution of the military. There's 2.1 million of us in uniform. And the American people can take it to the bank that all of us, every single one of us from private to general, we're loyal to that Constitution and we'll never turn our back on it, no matter what the threats, no matter what the humiliation, no matter what. If we're willing to die for that document, if we're willing to deploy to combat, if we're willing to lose an arm, a leg, an eye, to protect and support and defend that document and protect the American people, then we're willing to live for it, too. So, I'm not going to comment directly on those things, but I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me- we'll never turn our back on that Constitution. Milley: But for the record, was there anything inappropriate or treasonous about the calls you made to China? Milley: Absolutely not. Zero. None. O'Donnell: It almost seems odd to ask this question. Because the former commander-in-chief seems to be calling for your execution. Are you worried about your safety? Milley: I've got adequate safety protection. I wish those comments had not been made, but they were, and we'll take appropriate measures to ensure my safety and the safety of my family."

"Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America's top general deserves to be put to death. That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley's phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was "an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH." (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.) Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantics publication of a profile of Milley, by this magazine's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who detailed the ways in which Milley attempted to protect the Constitution from Trump."

"Trump later called Milley twice to inquire about how the military should deal with the issue of Confederate flags, statues and military bases named after Confederate generals. Milley said he favored making changes. During an Oval Office meeting, Trump returned to the issue. He said he did not want a change. "We're not going to ban Confederate flags. It's Southern pride and heritage." Meadows said that the Confederate flags should not be banned. It was a freedom of speech issue, and the Pentagon lawyers agreed with him. Trump asked Milley, what do you think? "I've already told you twice, Mr. President. Are you sure you want to hear it again?" Yeah, go ahead, Trump said. "Mr. President," Milley said, "I think you should ban the flags, change the names of bases, and take down the statues." He continued, "I'm from Boston, these guys were traitors." Someone asked, what about the Confederate dead buried at Arlington National Cemetery? "Interestingly," Milley said of the nearly 500 Confederate soldiers buried there, "they're arranged in a circle and the names on the gravestones are facing inward, and that symbolizes that they turned their back on the Union. They were traitors at the time, they are traitors today, and they're traitors in death for all of eternity. Change the names, Mr. President." There was brief silence in the Oval Office. Pence, who almost always took the super-serious path supporting Trump, half-joked, "I think I just found my Union self." Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, added, "I'm a Yankee, too!" Without saying anything, Trump jumped to the next topic that came to mind."

"Milley knew that history moves slowly but then often without warning lurches suddenly forward so it seemed impossible to stop. Whether the country was witnessing the end of Trump or the next phase of Trump would only be known in retrospect. Trump was not dormant. He was out holding campaign-style rallies across the country in the summer of 2021. More than 10,000 people in Trump hats and waving signs that read "Save America!" attended his June 26 rally in Wellington, Ohio. "We didn't lose. We didn't lose. We didn't lose," Trump told the crowd. "Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!" they roared. "We won the election twice!" Trump said. This was the latest way to claim he had beaten Biden. The crowd erupted. "And it's possible we'll have to win it a third time." About 90 minutes into the rally, Trump whipped them up again. This was not farewell. "We will not bend," Trump said, adopting a Churchillian cadence. It was a war speech. "We will not break. We will not yield. We will never give in. We will never give up. We will never back down. We will never, ever surrender. My fellow Americans, our movement is far from over. In fact, our fight has only just begun." Milley wondered, was this just Trump's desire to project strength? Or a desire for absolute power?"

"You are what makes the United States undaunted by the difficult, and motivated by the impossible."

"George Floyd's death amplified the pain, the frustration and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in and day out. I have many policemen in my family, and I am personally outraged by George Floyd's brutal and senseless killing. The protests that have ensued not only speak to this injustice, but also to centuries of injustice towards Black Americans. We, as a nation and as a military, are still struggling with racism, and we have much work to do."

"We are facing, right now, two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities, and both fully intend to change the current rules-based order."

"[And in Ukraine, we are learning the lesson that] aggression left unanswered only emboldens the aggressor. Let us never forget the massacre that we have just witnessed in Bucha. Know the slaughter that occurred in Mariupol. And the best way to honor their sacrifice is to support their fight for freedom and to stand against tyranny."

"Speaking of the seven-week war in Ukraine ignited by Vladimir Putin, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning us to expect a war that lasts for years. “I do think this is a very protracted conflict … measured in years,” Milley told Congress. “I don’t know about a decade, but at least years, for sure.” As our first response, said Milley, we should build more military bases in Eastern Europe and begin to rotate U.S. troops in and out."

"Milley continued to be hounded by the events of June 1. His critics were everywhere: on cable news channels, on social media, on op-ed pages. Milley understood the ridicule. He had been photographed in battle fatigues alongside a president who was intent on politicizing the military. It was a fiasco. He called many of his predecessors to seek advice. "Should I resign?" he asked Colin Powell, who had been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. "Fuck no!" Powell said. "I told you never to take the job. You should never have taken the job. Trump's a fucking maniac." Milley received similar, although less colorful, advice from a dozen former secretaries of defense and former chairmen. Milley decided to apologize publicly but did not give Trump advance warning... Several days later, Trump stopped Milley after a routine meeting in the Oval Office. "Hey, aren't you proud of walking with your president?" Trump asked. "To the church?" Milley asked. Yes, Trump said. "Why did you apologize?" "Mr. President, it's got nothing to do with you actually." Trump looked skeptical. "It had to do with me," Milley said. "It had to do with this uniform. Had to do with the traditions of the United States military and that we are an apolitical organization. "You're a politician," Milley said. "You're a political actor. For you to do it, that's your call. But I cannot be part of political events, Mr. President. It's one of our long-standing traditions." "Why did you apologize?" the president asked again. "That's a sign of weakness." "Mr. President," he said, looking directly at Trump, "not where I come from." He was a Boston-area native. "Where I was born and how I was raised is when you make a mistake, you admit it." Trump tilted his head to the side like the Victrola Dog, the small dog famously pictured staring at a windup phonograph and long used by RCA Records as a mascot. "Hmm," he said. "Okay.""

"We who wear the cloth of our nation understand that cohesion is a force multiplier. Divisiveness leads to defeat. As one of our famous presidents said, 'a house divided does not stand.'"

"As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune. As many of you saw, the result of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week, that sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I've learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it. Embrace the Constitution, keep it close to your heart. It is our North Star."

"Combat is not for the faint of heart, it's not for the weak-kneed, it's not for those who are not psychologically resilient and tough and hardened to the brutality, to the viciousness of it. We've got to get this Army hard, and we've got to get it hard fast."

"We don't want to lose thousands of soldiers to [the ACFT]. This fitness test is hard. No one should be under any illusions about it, but we really don't want to lose soldiers on the battlefield. We don't want young men and women to get killed in action because they weren't fit."

"Equality and opportunity are matters of military readiness, not just political correctness."

"Since the protests began, I sought information to help me assess the ability of federal, state and local authorities to handle situations under their responsibility. I continually assessed and advised that it was not necessary to employ active duty troops in response to the civil unrest occurring in our nation. It was my view then, and it remains so now, that local, state and federal police backed up by the National Guard under governor control, could, and continually can, effectively handle the security situation in every case across the country."

"The 6th of January was one of the days of high risk. Neither I, nor anyone that I know of, to include the FBI or anybody else, envisioned the thousands of people who assaulted the capitol. To basically encircle the Capitol and assault it from multiple directions simultaneously, and to do what they did, that was something else. The 6th was pretty dramatic. That's about as dramatic as you're going to see it, short of a civil war... What you might have seen was a precursor to something far worse down the road."

"Opportunity in our military must be reflective of the diverse talent in order for us to remain strong. Our nation is ready to fulfill the promise of our Constitution to build a more perfect union and to ensure equal justice for all people, and it is your generation that can and will bring the joint force to be truly inclusive of all people."

"You're entering a different world. The United States is under significant challenges in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. We see revanchist Russia, as we have just witnessed another invasion in Ukraine. In Asia, we are in the third decade of the largest global economic shift in 500 years, resulting in a rapidly rising China as a great power with a revisionist foreign policy backed up with an increasingly capable military."

"The nature of war is not going to change. It's still a political act. It's a decision by humans to impose their political will on their opponent by the use of violence."

"You'll be fighting with robotic tanks, ships and airplanes. We've witnessed a revolution in lethality and precision munitions. What was once the exclusive province of the U.S. military is now available to most nation states with the money and will to acquire them."

"And finally, there is the mother of all technologies — artificial intelligence — where machines are actually developing the capacity to learn and to reason. These rapidly converging developments in time and space are resulting in that profound change — the most profound change ever in human history. And whatever overmatch we, the United States, enjoy militarily … the United States is challenged in every domain of warfare: space, cyber, maritime, air and land."

"We are proud of you. You have a difficult and dangerous road ahead, and no one should underestimate it. But you also have the opportunity to navigate those dangerous roads ahead and to lead our nation's most precious resource: the young men and women who don the cloth of this nation, the American soldier."

"As you march into your future, have the vision to change and to prevent war from happening in the first place. By maintaining peace through the strength of the U.S. military, and the example of our values, it is up to you, today."

"His great service to the country was shown in the remarkable control and influence which he exercised in dealings with Moros, Mexicans and Indians which was invariably used in promoting peace. By personal effort he prevented many hostile outbreaks on the part of Indians. Blessed Are The Peacemakers"

"As I look back over the circumstances of my life, I feel deeply grateful for the friendship, the cooperation and support I have received from those with whom I have been associated in and out of the army and in all parts of the world- contacts with the peoples of many races and colors by which our lives have been filled with joy and gladness, and which have contributed much to the delightful memories of a soldier's career."

"HUGH LENOX SCOTT was born at Danville, Kentucky, on 22 September 1853; graduated from the United States Military Academy, 1876; was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 9th Cavalry, June 1876, assuming that month a vacancy in the 7th Cavalry created by Little Bighorn battle casualties; was stationed at various posts in Dakota Territory and participated in the Nez Percé campaign, 1877; was promoted to first lieutenant, June 1878, and engaged in scouting and constructing telegraph lines, 1879-1882; married Mary Merrill, 1880; studied and became an authority on the language, customs, and history of the Plains Indians; served on an exploring expedition with the Geological Survey, 1884; was on recruiting service, 1886-1888; was on duty at Fort Sill and scouting in the Central Plains, 1889; served in the Sioux outbreak of 1890, being involved in actions at Porcupine, Wounded Knee, and White Clay Creeks; organized and commanded Troop L (composed of Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Indians), 7th Cavalry, at Fort Sill, 1892-1897; was promoted to captain, 1895; was in charge of Geronimo's band of Chiricahua prisoners of war, 1894-1897; was assigned to the Adjutant General's Department to work on the Indian sign language, 1897-1898; was promoted to major of volunteers and assigned as assistant adjutant general, I Corps, 1898-1899; became lieutenant colonel of volunteers and assistant adjutant general on the staff of the military governor of Cuba, 1899-1900; was military governor of Sulu Archipelago, Philippines, and commander of the Jolo military post, 1903-1906; was wounded in action at Crater Lake while campaigning against the Moros, November 1903; was superintendent of the United States Military Academy, 1906-1910; served in the Office of the Chief of Staff, 1911; dealt with problems of various Indian tribes, 1908-1915; was promoted to lieutenant colonel (March) and colonel (August), 1911; commanded the 3d Cavalry, 1912, and the 2d Cavalry Brigade, 1913-1914, on the Mexican border; was assistant chief of staff of the United States Army, 1914; was promoted to brigadier general, March 1913, and major general, April 1915; was chief of staff of the United States Army, 16 November 1914-21 September 1917; supervised the concentration of troops on the Mexican border preliminary to the Punitive Expedition; laid the foundations for mobilizing, training, and equipping the Army for World War I; espoused conscription over a volunteer system for the Army; was a member of the Root commission to Russia, 1917; retired from active duty, September 1917, but was recalled to inspect the battlefront in Europe; commanded the 78th Division and Camp Dix, 1918; retired permanently from the Army, May 1919; was a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1919-1920; died in Washington, D.C., on 30 April 1934."

"This belief in immediate translation to paradise is at the bottom of most of the troubles of Sulu and the Mohammedan Asiatic islands as it can readily be seen to be largely responsible for the contempt of death especially in dealing with the white man and the white man's penal laws. Even regarding battle, the Sultan of Sulu has said to me many times: "It will not frighten my people if I tell them, 'The Americans will fight you if you rob and murder.' They will reply: 'Well, what of that? If a man dies to-day he won't have the trouble of dying to-morrow.'"

"I soon found that the Sioux language was quite limited in the scope of its usefulness, but that the sign language of the Plains was an intertribal language, spoken everywhere in the buffalo country from the Saskatchewan River of British America to Mexico, east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Missouri, and I began this study at the same time with the Sioux, and have continued its study right down to this very day."

"Japan and some of the other allies thought that we could never put more than three hundred thousand men in France. The achievements of our army and navy contributed much to the downfall of the empires of Germany and Austria and placed our country in the front rank of nations. The tremendous effort we were also able to put forth astonished the world, including ourselves, and served to make known to all that the United States will fight if necessary and cannot be attacked with impunity."