Meade's Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox

Front Cover
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1922 - United States - 371 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 193 - At a moment when every true man is laboring to his utmost, when the days ought to be forty hours long, General Halleck is translating French books at nine cents a page ; and, sir, if you should put those nine cents in a box and shake them up, you would form a clear idea of General Halleck's soul...
Page 156 - He is an odd combination; there is one good thing, at any rate — he is the concentration of all that is American. He talks bad grammar, but he talks it naturally, as much as to say, 'I was so brought up and, if I try fine phrases, I shall only appear silly.
Page 139 - Arbor; it was badly managed, or rather it was difficult to manage, like all those infernal night marches, and so part of the troops went fifteen miles instead of nine and there was any amount of straggling and exhaustion.
Page 126 - Sir, I consider that despatch an insult to the army I command and to me personally. The Army of the Potomac does not require General Grant's inspiration or anybody's else inspiration to make it fight!
Page 103 - Why, we never saw any Rebels where we were; only smoke and bushes, and lots of our men tumbling about"; and now I appreciate this most fully.
Page 83 - He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.
Page 102 - When our line advances, there is the line of the enemy, nothing showing but the bayonets, and the battle-flags stuck on the top of the work.
Page 224 - Put a man in a hole, and a good battery on a hill behind him, and he will beat off three times his number, even if he is not a very good...
Page 81 - Killcavalry's raid fulfilled. I have heard many persons very indignant with him. They said he went to the President and pressed his plan; told Pleasonton he would not come back alive if he didn't succeed; that he is a frothy braggart, without brains and not over-stocked with desire to fall on the field; and that he gets all his reputation by newspapers and political influence.
Page 327 - He is a very homely man, with a regular nest of wrinkles in his face, which play and twist as he eagerly talks on each subject; but his expression is pleasant and kindly.

Bibliographic information