There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenl….

The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places, from Valverde, New Mexico, and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont, and Fernandina on the Florida….

Beneath everything else, North and West, there ran a profound, unvoiced, almost subconscious conviction that the [American] nation was going to go on….

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 ….

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence..

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 a….

Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come..

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward..

Yet there is a dignity in the human spirit which can become most clearly visible in the moment of defeat and disaster..

Nathan Bedford Forrest ... used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. He liked horses because he liked fast movement, and hi….

Abraham Lincoln was not all brooding and melancholy and patient understanding. There was a hard core in him, and plenty of toughness. He could recogn….