General, if you put every Union soldier now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line, I will kill them all before they reach my line.

General, if you put every Union soldier now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line, I will kill them all before they reach my line.

This is a hard fight and we had better all die than lose it.

I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy.

Time sets all things right. Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.

I have been a soldier all my life. I have commanded companies, I have commanded regiments. I have commanded divisions. And I have commanded even more. But there are no fifteen thousand men i the world that can go across that ground.

My arm is paralyzed; my voice that once could be heard all along the line, is gone; I can scarcely speak above a whisper; my hearing is very much impaired, and sometimes I feel as if I wished the end would come; but I have some misrepresentations of my battles that I wish to correct, so as to have my record correct before I die.