- Picking any one moment or place is a romantic approach to history that I'm uneasy about. Singling out any one event from history as all-important. Every event is led up to by so many others, small and large. Besides, what you think about and where you'd want to go keeps changing.
- Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery. Another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy-and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy. Turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then, in 1877, for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.
- It would be nice to talk to Lincoln. He'd really talk to you. Maybe run circles around you. Not like others who you figure would be mostly rhetoric.
- History is a pretty wretched subject to study in school. As I remember it, it was terrible. They required me to memorize so many things. There was a Treaty of Utrecht, and it has thirteen steps. I don't know one of those steps. But it had thirteen.
- Plot makes a story move under its own power. And to neglect plotting as a device of history is a serious mistake. Among American historians, probably my favorite is Francis Parkman. Parkman's a wonderful historian. I had not read him until late in life to realize how good he was.
- People want to know why the South is so interested in the Civil War. I had maybe, it's a rough guess, about fifty fistfights in my life. Out of those fifty fistfights, the ones that I had the most vivid memory of were the ones I lost. I think that's one reason why the South remembers the war more than the North does.
- The Marines had a great time with me. They said if you used to be a captain, you might make a pretty good Marine.
- God is the greatest dramatist.
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