Quotes from Michael Shaara

Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying?

There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.

The thing about the heart was that you could not coax it or force it, as you could any other disease. Will power meant nothing.

The true rain came in a monster wind, and the storm broke in blackness over the hills and the bloody valley; the sky opened along the ridge, and the vast water thundered down, drowning the fires, flooding the red creeks, washing the rocks and the grass and the white bones of the dead, cleansing the earth and soaking it thick and rich with water and wet again with clean cold rainwater, driving the blood deep into the Earth, to grow it again with the roots toward heaven.

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.

Ross said, "They play even during an attack. Not very good. But inspiring. Have you heard the Rebel yell?" Fremantle nodded. "Godawful sound. I expect they learned it from Indians.

He suspended thinking; his mind was a bloody vacancy, like a room in which there has been a butchering.

In the dark of the trees he could smell splintered wood and see white upturned faces like wide white dirty flowers.

The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

Well, boy, if he's an angel, he's sure a murderin' angel.

If you are not affected, if you are not hurt by what we do, then you will not do anything to stop it. The war will simply continue.

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

Saw the face of Robert Lee. Incredible eyes. An honest man, a simple man. Out of date. They all ride to glory, all the plumed knights.

A true gentleman has no vices, but he allows you your own.

He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become.

A little eccentricity is a help to a general. It helps with the newspapers. The women love it too. Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. That's why the fall in love with preachers.

I tell you, Colonel, we got to win this war. What will happen, do you think, if we lose? Do you think the country will ever get back together again? Doubt it. Would it too deep. The differences. . .If they win there'll be two countries, like France and Germany in Europe, and the border will be armed. Then there'll be a third country in the West, and that one will be the balance of power.

This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land

In a land where all slaves are servants, all servants are slaves, and thus ends democracy.

How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible?

Never let them see you run.

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.

The earth was actually shuddering. It was as if you were a baby and your mother was shuddering with cold.

Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. It became a publishing sensation. Lincoln was later wryly to remark to her: 'So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.' The South reacted with fury to her attack on slavery.