Courage – a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.
I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.
You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.
I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.
If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.
I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash-and it may be well that we become so hardened.
A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.
After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.
But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.
You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm.
We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.