Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson.

The Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States.

Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

What a general could do, Thomas did; no more dependable soldier for a moment of crisis existed on the North American continent, or ever did exist... Thomas comes down in history as the Rock of Chickamauga, the great defensive fighter, the man who could never be driven away but who was not much on the offensive. That may be a correct appraisal, Yet it may also be worth making note that just twice in all the war was a major Confederate army driven away from a prepared position in complete rout - at Chattanooga and at Nashville. Each time the blow that routed it was launched by Thomas.

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

Abraham Lincoln was not all brooding and melancholy and patient understanding. There was a hard core in him, and plenty of toughness. He could recognize a revolutionary situation when he saw one, and he could act fast and ruthlessly to meet it.