S.C. Gwynne Quotes & Sayings

And now the solider toiled upward through an extremely steep ascent over rock outcroppings and ravines. At the top, they saw something few white men had ever seen: the preternaturally flat expanse of the high plains, covered only with short buffalo grass. 'As far as the eye could reach,' wrote Carter, 'not an object of any kind or living thing was in sight. It stretched out before us- one uninterrupted plain, only to be compared with the ocean in its vastness.' The scene was terrifying even for men with experience of the plains. 'This is a terrible country,' railroad worker Arthur Ferguson had written a few years earlier, 'the stillness, wildness, and desolation of which is awful... Not a tree to be seen... and it seemed as if the solitude had been eternal. — S.C. Gwynne

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis," Douglas commented. Times change, and we change with them. — S.C. Gwynne

Forty years ago my mother died," he said. "She captured by Comanches, nine years old. Love Indian and wild life so well, no want to go back to white folks. All same people anyway, God say. I love my mother. — S.C. Gwynne

Some of them screamed for locks of his hair, to which the blushing general replied, "Really, ladies, this is the first time I was ever surrounded by the enemy! — S.C. Gwynne

he found the general seated on a log, quite motionless, with his eyes closed. His cap, as usual, was pulled down to his nose. Hampton gave Jackson his report and volunteered to lead an advance over his new bridge. To Hampton's complete amazement, the general did not speak, nor did he even move. He "sat in silence for some time, then rose and walked off in silence." Jackson later was found prostrate and asleep underneath a tree, in spite of the daylong artillery battle that was screaming overhead. He seemed almost perfectly passive. When Longstreet sent an aide to him asking for his help, Jackson replied that he could do nothing. He later fell into such a deep sleep that his aides had trouble waking him. He fell asleep at dinner with a biscuit between his teeth. When he was awakened, he suddenly seemed to come to his senses, saying, "Now, gentlemen, let us at once to bed, and rise with the dawn, and see if tomorrow we cannot do something. — S.C. Gwynne

never take counsel of your fears. — S.C. Gwynne

The great and complicated political reasons for secession, thundered about in Congress and in the state legislatures, were not their reasons, which were more like those expressed by a captive Confederate soldier, who was not a slaveholder, to his puzzled Union captors. "I'm fighting because you're down here," he said.30 — S.C. Gwynne

The first generations of Comanches in captivity never really understood the concept of wealth, of private property. The central truth of their lives was the past, the dimming memory of the wild, ecstatic freedom of the plains, of the days when Comanche warriors in black buffalo headdresses rode unchallenged from Kansas to northern Mexico, of a world without property or boundaries. What Quanah had that the rest of his tribe in the later years did not was that most American of human traits: boundless optimism. — S.C. Gwynne

I will do nothing to superinduce sleep by putting myself at ease, or making myself more comfortable; if, however, in spite of my resistance I yield to my infirmity, then I deserve to be laughed at, and accept as punishment the mortification I feel."19 — S.C. Gwynne

Worst of all was the blizzard. People from the east or west coasts of America may think they have seen a blizzard. Likely they have not. It is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the plains, and got its name on the plains. It entailed wind-driven snow so dense and temperatures so cold that anyone lost in them on the shelterless plains was as good as dead. — S.C. Gwynne

The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. — S.C. Gwynne

Stonewall Jackson was master of all he surveyed. Two Union forces were withdrawing from his front. There was a certain beautiful symmetry to it. The campaign, which started with a single enemy army pursuing Jackson southward through the valley, would end with two beaten Union armies withdrawing from him in a northerly direction. A week later, Jackson advised his mapmaker, Hotchkiss, to 'never take counsel of your fears.' A person who followed such advice would be doomed to a short life. — S.C. Gwynne

vanguard. Jackson's division was the old valley army: — S.C. Gwynne

The greatest threat of all to their identity, and to the very idea of a nomadic hunter in North America, appeared on the plains in the late 1860s. These were the buffalo men. Between 1868 and 1881 they would kill thirty-one million buffalo, stripping the plains almost entirely of the huge, lumbering creatures and destroying any last small hope that any horse tribe could ever be restored to its traditional life. There was no such thing as a horse Indian without a buffalo herd. Such an Indian had no identity at all. — S.C. Gwynne

Much of this behavior grew out of his faith, his desire to be uncompromisingly truthful at all times, and his very particular sense of Christian courtesy. He explained his refusal to voice disapproval of others by saying, "It is quite contrary to my nature to keep silence where I cannot but disapprove. Indeed I may as well confess that it would often give me real satisfaction to express just what I feel, but this would be to disobey the divine precept [judge not lest ye be judged], and I dare not do — S.C. Gwynne

To make matters worse, Jackson placed great value on regurgitating every last detail of the assigned texts. When, in response to Jackson's question 'What are the three simple machines?' a cadet answered, 'The inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel,' Jackson replied, 'No, sir. The lever, the wheel, and the inclined plane. — S.C. Gwynne