Killer Angel Quotes

Robert E Lee

"When this is over, I shall miss it very much... I do not mean the fighting"

Robert E Lee

"We must be charitable with these people, Major. We have enough enemies"

Robert E Lee

Wants to reproach Stuart - not court martial

Robert E Lee

"Different men, different methods. Docile men make very poor soldiers" - "Docile men do not make good soldiers"

Robert E Lee

thinks this about Hill: "It was a brutal military truth that there were men who are marvelous with a regiment but could not handle a brigade, and men who were superb with a division but incapable of leading a corps"

Robert E Lee

"Thought for the first time that day of his son, Rooney, wounded, lying not far from here... He put his hand down on black dirt, and was reminded: Pennsylvania. I am the invader"

Robert E Lee

"A man loses part of himself, an arm, a leg, and though he has been a fine soldier he is never quite the same again; he has lost nothing else visible, but there is a certain softness in the man thereafter a slowness, a caution."

Robert E Lee

"Soldering has one great trap. To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. That is ... a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men."

Robert E Lee

"We don't fear our own deaths... we protect ourselves out of military necessity not fear. You sir do not protect yourself enough and must give thought to it. I need you. But the point is, we are not afraid to die. We are prepared for our own deaths and for the deaths of comrades. We learn that at the Point. But I have seen this happen: We are not prepared for as many deaths as we have to face, inevitably as the war goes on. There comes a time... We are never prepared for so many to die. We expect some chosen few. We expect the occasional empty chair, toast to dear departed comrades. Victory celebrations for most of us, a hallowed death for a few. But the war goes on. And the men die. The price gets ever higher. Some officers ... can pay no longer. We are prepared to lose some of us... but never all of us... but that is the trap. You can hold nothing back when you attack. You must commit yourself totally. And yet, if they all die, a man must ask himself, will it have been worth it"

Robert E Lee

Believes that Longstreet cares to much for men which is why he proposes his defensive tactics

Robert E Lee

Thinks he is old and wants the war to be over - not feeling well lately

Robert E Lee

"They had their war at last. But where was there ever any choice?"

Robert E Lee

"The war had come. He was a member of the army that would march against his home, his sons. He was not only to serve in it but actually to lead it, to make the plans and issue the orders to kill and burn and ruin. He could not do that. Each man would make his own decision, but he could not raise his hand against his own. And so what then? To stand by and watch, observer at the death? To do nothing? To wait until the war was over? And if so, from what vantage point and what distance? How far do you stand from the attack on your home, whatever the cause, so that you can bear it? It had nothing to do with causes; it was no longer a matter of vows"

Robert E Lee

"When Virginia left the Union she bore his home away as surely as if she were a ship setting out to sea, and what was left behind on the shore was not his any more. So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own. And so he took up arms wilfully, knowingly, in perhaps the wrong cause against his own sacred oath and stood now upon alien ground he had once sworn to defend, sworn in honor, and he had arrived there really in the hands of God, without any voice at all; there had never been an alternative except to run away, and he could not do that. But Longstreet was right of course: he had broken the vow. And he would pay. He knew that and accepted it. He had already paid. He closed his eyes. Dear God, let it end soon."

Robert E Lee

Gave Stuart a good talking to about he can't let them down again by leaving them blind - but no court martial

Robert E Lee

"He could not retreat now. It might be the clever thing to do, but cleverness did not win victories; the bright combinations rarely worked. You won because the men thought they would win, attacked with courage, attacked with faith, and it was the faith more than anything else you had to protect; that was one thing that was in your hands, and so you could not ask them to leave the field to the enemy."

Day of the 3rd day of the battle

1 day before 4th of July

Why the 2nd day attack failed

The attack wasn't synchronized - Ewell didn't attack and get into position hours after Longstreet started, General Rodes didn't attack at all, Early attacked hours late

Robert E Lee

"A man of honor knows that when he has faced an enemy and exchanged one round of blows and stands there bleeding, and sees the blood of the enemy, a man of honor can no longer turn away."

Robert E Lee

Decides that Longstreet and Pickett would attack in the middle where the enemy would be weaker and Stuart around the rear to attack and clean up

Robert E Lee

"I was trying to warn you. But you have no Cause. You and I, we have no Cause. We have only the army. But if a soldier fights only for soldiers, he cannot ever win. It is only soldiers who die."

James Longstreet

Thinks defensively and is stubborn - does not approve of the invasion - not from Virginia, but from South Carolina - nicknamed Old Pete & Lee's old warhorse

James Longstreet

Had a spy (Harrison) that informed the Confederates of the Union position at the beginning of the battle - Lee agrees that the spy saved them

James Longstreet

"He did not believe in offensive warfare when the enemy outnumbered you and outgunned you and would come looking for you anyway if you waited somewhere on your own ground"

James Longstreet

Wife not doing good and children died the previous winter

James Longstreet

"There was this truth about the war: it taught you the men you could depend on"

James Longstreet

"We die just as dead as anybody, and a boy from back home ain't a better soldier than a boy from Minnesota or anywhere else just because he's back home"

James Longstreet

Wants to court-martial Stuart

James Longstreet

Wants to disengage from the first battle (go to the right flank - the Union army's left side - and position between Meade and Washington) and find new ground (high ground) and wait for the Union to attack them and then defend and win - Lee disagrees

James Longstreet

Ewell and Early both opposed his idea to go disengage

James Longstreet

Considers Pickett and Hood the best soldiers and generals

James Longstreet

"On little things like that - a cup of water - battles were decided. Generalship? How much of a factor is it, really?"

James Longstreet

"It troubles me sometimes... they're [the men] never quite the enemy, those boys in blue... Swore an oath too"

Robert E Lee

honest man - no slaves & doesn't believe in slavery - doesn't think black people same as white - beloved in both armies

James Longstreet

"I used to command those boys... difficult thing to fight men you used to command"

James Longstreet

"I must say, there are times when I'm troubled. But ... couldn't fight against home. Not against your own family. And yet ... we broke the vow"

James Longstreet

On 2nd day, is going attack Union left flank (Little round top) and take Cemetery Hill in reverse

However if they went that way they were going to be seen so he had to initiate a countermarch

James Longstreet

General Hood agrees with his plan, but it is too late

James Longstreet

Thinks Lee is not devious

James Longstreet

"Colonel, let me explain something. The secret of General Lee is that men love him and follow him with faith in him. That's one secret. The next secret is that General Lee makes a decision and he moves, with guts, and he's been up against a lot of sickly generals who don't know how to make decisions, although some of them have guts but whose men don't love them. That's why we win, mostly. Because we move with speed, and faith, and because we usually have the good ground. Tactics? God, man, we don't win because of tricks. What were the tactics at Malvern Hill? What were the tactics at Fredericksburg, where we got down behind a bloody stone wall and shot the bloody hell out of them as they came up, wave after wave, bravest thing you ever saw, because, listen there are some damn good boys across the way, make no mistake on that. I've fought with those boys, and they know how to fight when they've got the ground, but tactics? Tactics?"

James Longstreet

"There's no strategy to this bloody war. What it is is old Napoleon and a hell of a lot of chivalry. That's all it is. What were the tactics at Chancellorsville, where we divided the army, divided it, so help me God, in the face of the enemy, and got away with it because Joe Hooker froze cold in his stomach? What were the tactics yesterday? What were they today? And what will be the blessed tactics tomorrow? I'll tell you the tactics tomorrow. Devious? Christ in Heaven. Tomorrow we will attack an enemy that outnumbers us, an enemy that outguns us, and enemy dug in on the high ground, and let me tell you, if we win that one it will not be because of the tactics or because we are great strategists or because there is anything even remotely intelligent about the war at all. It will be a bloody miracle, a bloody miracle."

James Longstreet

"He shuddered. He remembered that day in church when he prayed from the soul and listened and knew in that moment that there was no one there, no one to listen."

Stuart

Shows up after 2nd day and left because he went joyriding - left the Confederate army blind - everyone mad at him

George Pickett

Shows up after the 2nd day of battle and loves war also after 3rd day none of his commanders are uninjured

James Longstreet

"We have always had pride"

Robert E Lee

"We have always been outgunned. Our strength is in our pride"

Armistead

"They [the British] thinks we're fighting to keep the slaves. He [Fremantle] says that's what most of Europe thinks the war is all about. Now, what we supposed to do about that?"

James Longstreet

"He looked out at all the bright apple faces. He saw again in his mind the steady face of Lee. He thought: I don't belong. But he wanted to join them. Not even to say anything. Just to site ther and listen to the jokes up close, sit inside the warm ring, because off here at this ddistancae with the deafness you never heard what they said; you were out of it. But if he joined there would ba stiffness. He didn ot want to spoil their night. And yet suddenly, terribly, he wanted it again, the way it used to be arms linked together, all drink and singing beautifully into the night, with visions of death from the afteroonon, and dreams of death in the coming dawn, the night filled with a monstrous and temporary glittering joy, fat moments, thicik seconds dorppong like warm rain, jewel after jewel"

James Longstreet

"He thought of the three Union corps, one of them Hancock, dug in on the hill, and he let them all go. He did not want to lead any more. He wanted to sit and drink and listen to stories"

James Longstreet

"Sir, I have been a soldier all my life. I have served from the ranks on up. You know my service. I have to tell you now, sir, that I believe this attack will fail. I believe that no fifteen thousand men ever set for battle could take that hill, sir."

James Longstreet

"I cannot even refuse, I cannot even back away, I cannot leave him to fight it alone, they're my people, my boys. God help me, I can't even quit."

James Longstreet

Thinks that the main middle attack should be taken over by Hill

James Longstreet

Thinks about resigning from leading but cannot do it

James Longstreet

Starts crying before the battle

James Longstreet

"When they saw him [Lee] they actually stopped running. From Death itself."

James Longstreet

Believes they can no longer win the war after 3rd day and doesn't want his people to die for nothing

George Pickett

Last in his class and likes war

Richard Ewell

Stonewall Jackson's successor

Richard Ewell

Unsure of himself and is 1 legged

Richard Ewell

Delayed and didn't attack on 1st day even though they could have won

Richard Ewell

Disappoints Lee and is kinda bad

Ambrose Powell Hill

Doesn't like to follow orders and one of his generals - Harry Heth attacked without order and started the whole conflict

Lewis Armistead

Commander of one of George Pickett's brigades

Lewis Armistead

Likes Winfield Scott Hancock

Lewis Armistead

"You are by nature the stubbornest human being... You are also the best damn defensive soldier I ever saw"

Lewis Armistead

Gives Pickett his ring to send to the person Pickett was writing to

Lewis Armistead

"If I lift a hand against you, friend, may God strike me dead."

Lewis Armistead

Tells some union officer before he dies that he sends his regrets to Hancock - Hancock is hit but survives

Lewis Armistead

Dies in the battle

Richard Brooke Garnett

Commands one of Pickett's brigades and wants to redeem his honor after Jackson wanted to court-martial him

Richard Brooke Garnett

He rides on his horse against orders despite being an easy target because his leg bad - dies in the battle

J.E.B Stuart

Leader of cavalry and was supposed to keep Lee informed of Union movement, but disappears (later comes back) and fails

Jubal Early

Commander of one of Ewell's divisions

Jubal Early

Longstreet hates this guy and Ewell always defers to this guy

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin University & Has younger brother Thomas who becomes his aide & is against slavery

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Defends Little Round Top

Kilrain

"I have reservations, I will admit. As many a man does. As you well know. This is not a thing to be ashamed of. But the thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a peawit. You take men one at a time, and I've seen a few blacks that earned my respect. A few. Not many, but a few."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"How do you force a man to fight-for freedom? The idiocy of it jarred him"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"Truth is too personal. Don't know if I can express it... Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it... I'll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"But more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain - in his speech

"We're an army going out to set other men free"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain - in his speech

"Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something... What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

He got 114/120 (6 didn't volunteer)

The men he got were the Second Maine

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"All a man is: wet leg of blood... never, forever, never, forever"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"Once he had a speech memorized from Shakespeare... What a piece of work is man in action how like an angel. And the old man (father) said... well boy, if he's an angel, he's sure a murderin' angel" - then gave an oration about Man: the Killer Angel

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"Home. One place is just like another, really... But the truth is it's all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same... Have always felt at home everywhere.... All mine, it all belongs to me. My world."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"He felt an oddness, a crawly hesitation, not wanting to touch him. He shook his head, amazed at himself... He felt it again: a flutter of unmistakable revulsion. Fat lips, brute jaw, red-veined eyeballs. He stood up. He had not expected this feeling. He had not even known this feeling was there. He remembered suddenly a conversation with a Southerner a long time ago, before the war, a Baptist minister. White complacent face, sense of bland enormous superiority: 'my dear man, you have to live among them, you simply don't understand'.'"

"He backed off. He stared at the palm of his own hand. A matter of thin skin. A matter of color. The reaction is instinctive. Any alien thing. And yet he was ashamed; he had not known it was there. He thought: If i feel this way, even I, an educated man ... what was in God's mind"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"To be alien and alone, among white lords and glittering machines, uprooted by brute force and threat of death from the familiar earth of what he did not even know was Africa, to be shipped in black stinking darkness across an ocean he had not dreamed existed, force the to work on alien soil, strange beyond belief, by men with guns whose words he could not even comprehend. What could the black man know of what was happening. He tried to imagine it. He had seen ignorance, but this was more than that. What could this man know of borders and states' rights and the Constitution... What did he know of the war? And yet he was truly what it was all about. It simplified to that. Seen in the flesh, the cause of the war was brutally clear."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"I don't really understand it. Never have. The more I think on it the more it horrifies me. How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible? But then right after that, after I left the room, the other one came to see me, the professor. I could see he was concerned, and I respected him, and he apologized for having offended me in my own home."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land."

Kilrain

"But those I knew ... well, you looked in the eye and there was a man. There was the divine spark, as my mother used to say. That was all there was to it ... all there is to it."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"I had one of those moments when you feel that if the rest of the world is right, then you yourself have gone mad. Because I was really thinking of killing him... and it was then I realized for the first time that if it was necessary to kill them. Then I would kill them."

Dan Butterfield - meant that it was time to rest

Song of Taps

Pickett

"Well, Jim Kemper kept needling our English friend about why they didn't come and join in with us, it being in their interest and all, and the Englishman said that it was a very touchy subject, since most Englishmen figured the war was all about, ah, slavery, and then old Kemper got a bit outraged and had to explain to him how wrong he was, and Sorrel and some others joined in, but no harm done."

Kilrain

"What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many... The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance... There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters ... what matter is justice.. This is why I'm here, I'll be treated as I deserve not as my father deserved.. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here - he tapped his white skull with a thick finger"

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Colonel Vincent positioned him on the extreme left of the Union line, and Vincent told him that he could not withdraw under any conditions. Otherwise the line would be flanked and the Confederates would take them in the rear

Vincent

"Now we'll see how professors fight... I'm a Harvard man myself"