They will learn that something happens to men, men who have felt no satisfaction, who have absorbed and digested defeat after bloody stupid defeat, men who up to now have done mostly what they were told to do. And now, he thought, the people will return, trying to rescue some fragile piece of home, and they will find this.and they will learn something new about war, more than the quiet nightmare of leaving your home behind. The commanders had ordered the provost guards at the bridges to let no goods leave the town, nothing could be carried across the bridges, and so what the men could not keep, what they could not steal, they had just destroyed. The whole corps had seemed to go insane, had turned the town into some kind of violent party, a furious storm that blew out of control, and he could not stop it. “Across the river he could see the burnt and crushed buildings of Fredericksburg, the debris piled along the streets, the scattered ruins of people's lives, lives that were changed forever. What we’re all fighting for, in the end, is each other.” I never saw dirt I’d die for, but I’m not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me, we’re worth something more than the dirt. It isn’t the land-there’s always more land. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. He was beginning to warm to it the words were beginning to flow. He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. We’re an army going out to set other men free.” I don’t … this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. He looked up into the sky, over silent faces. Most of us never saw a black man back home.

Many of us came … because it was the right thing to do.

Some came because we were ashamed not to. Some came in mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. “Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. He spoke very slowly, staring at the ground.

There’s not three hundred of us now.” He glanced up briefly. “This regiment was formed last fall, back in Maine.

Gods and generals shaara