Hey, great idea for a thread.------ About the Rebel soldiers, I always think of Grant's statement after the war: "Rarely have a people fought so well for a cause I believe to have been so wrong."
BTW, I think the finest and most revealing book about Grant I've ever read is : 'Campaigning With Grant' by Horace Porter (pub. 1897). Here is a little excerpt:
General Meade's irritability of temper, and over-sensitiveness to implied censure or criticism on the part of the newspapers, led him at one time to tender his resignation as commander of the Army of the Potomac. General Grant talked to him very kindly on the subject, soothed his feelings, and induced him to reconsider his intention. The general-in-chief did not mention the matter publicly, and was very glad that hasty action had been prevented. If Meade had resigned at this time, Hancock would have succeeded him, and Ingalls, who had shown such signal executive ability, might possibly have been given an important command. Ingalls and I expressed a desire repeatedly to serve in command of troops, as such service gave promise of more rapid promotion and was more in accordance with our tastes; but the general always insisted upon retaining us on his staff.
General Meade was a most accomplished officer. He had been thoroughly educated in his profession, and had a complete knowledge of both the science and the art of war in all its branches. He was well read, possessed of a vast amount of interesting information, had cultivated his mind as a linguist, and spoke French with fluency. When foreign officers visited the front they were invariably charmed by their interviews with the commander of the Army of the Potomac. He was a disciplinarian to the point of severity, was entirely subordinate to his superiors, and no one was more prompt than he to obey orders to the letter. In his intercourse with his officers the bluntness of the soldier was always conspicuous, and he never took pains to smooth any one's ruffled feelings.
There was an officer serving in the Army of the Potomac who had formerly been a surgeon. One day he appeared at Meade's headquarters in a high state of indignation, and said: "General, as I was riding over here some of the men in the adjoining camps shouted after me and called me 'Old Pills,' and I would like to have it stopped." Meade just at that moment was not in the best possible frame of mind to be approached with such a complaint. He seized hold of the eye-glasses, conspicuously large in size, which he always wore, clapped them astride of his nose with both hands, glared through them at the officer, and exclaimed: "Well, what of that? How can I prevent it? Why, I hear that, when I rode out the other day, some of the men called me a 'd-d old goggle-eyed snapping-turtle,' and I can't even stop that!" The officer had to content himself with this explosive expression of a sympathetic fellow-feeling, and to take his chances thereafter as to obnoxious epithets.
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