
Gen. Robert E. Lee, CSA
Commanding
The Army of Northern Virginia


After
only a few minutes of fighting the new Union troops were already beaten
back already stumbling down the hill to the spot where thousands of
others waited, leaving piles of their dead and wounded behind. The entire
hillside was blue now, except for the fifty yards immediately in front
of the wall where not a single blue soldier lay. Not one.
And
after all of this, at the end of the day he knew, nothing will have
been gained and nothing will have been lost. Nothing but the lives of
tens of thousands of men. Sickened by the needless tragedy of it all,
Lee shook his head in astounded disbelief, and to James Longstreet he
said, It is well that war is so terrible we should grow too fond
of it.
The preceding
passage is an excerpt
from No Greater Courage, and may not be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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