... anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong, we shall soon find out and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.

There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.

Let no guilty man escape, if it can he avoided. . . . No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

There is nothing more I should do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this moment.

A hero does for others. He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better. I am not that kind of person, but I want you to be. You could give something to her, to me, to those children in the quarter. You could give something I never could ... The white people out there are saying you don't have it-that you're a hog, not a man. But I know they are wrong.