Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers - if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible.

Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made

Soldiers who had been in the army long enough to know what a bloody swindle war really is would begin to feel that army life was really kind of fun, as long as [General Philip] Sheridan was up front.

What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew. The war was about a new birth of freedom.

Men see things late, and it may be that at times an evil fate drives them on.

Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.

And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.