History Does Not Usually Make

And There Is The Headlight, Shining Far Down The Track, Glinting Off The Steel Rails That, Like All Parallel Lines, Will Meet In Infinity, Which Is After All Where This Train Is Going.

Shiloh Had As Many Casualties As Waterloo, And Yet There Were Another 20 Waterloos To Come.

The Present Moment Is Nice But It Does Not Last. Living In It Is Like Waiting In A Junction Town For The Morning Limited; The Junction May Be Interesting But Some Day You Will Have To Leave It And You Do Not Know Where The Limited Will Take You.

It Began With One Act Of Madness, And It Ended With Another. John Brown Heard History's Clock Strike In The Night And Tried To Hurry Dawn Along With Gunfire; Now John Wilkes Booth Heard The Clock Strike, And He Tried With Gunfire To Restore The Darkness. Each Man Stood Outside The Human Community, Directed By Voices The Sane Do Not Hear, And Each Kept History From Going Logically... The Line From Harper's Ferry To Ford's Theater Is A Red Thread Binding The Immense Disorder Of The Civil War Into An Irrational Sort Of Coherence.

The Enduring Realization That When A Great Challenge Comes, The Most Ordinary People Can Show That They Value Something More Than They Value Their Own Lives. When The Last Of The Veterans Had Gone, And The Sorrows And Bitterness Which The War Created Had At Last Worn Away, This Memory Remained.