“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
Sherman Revisited
Epilogue: 2025 Book Discussion
Michael and David aim to read William Manchester's Churchill series, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Plutarch's Lives. Cal plans to revisit The Odyssey to prepare for the new movie, along with tackling War and Peace and Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.
Liberté, Liberté Chérie
"You must know him as the North River captain and know that it is only the exercise of his own judgment which was wanting to perfect his character."
Eternity Is Nearer Every Day
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
Honor and the Haunting: What Valiant Ambition Reveals About Us
"Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever having put on another."
The Struggle for the North
Montgomery's fate assisting me to sing! Where num'rous heroes met the angel Death. The laurel yet shall grace his bust; but, oh! America must wear sad cypress now. Nor strive to have her injuries redress'd. Oh had but Carleton suffer'd in his stead! Had half idolitrous Canadia bled!
El Libertador
Tread, if you dare, on this stairway of Titans, this crown of earth, this unassailable battlement of the New World. From such heights will you command the unobstructed vista; and here, looking on earth and sky – admiring the brute force of terrestrial creation – you will say: Two eternities gaze upon me: the past and the yet-to-be; but this throne of nature, like its creator, is as enduring, as indestructible, as eternal, as the Universal Father.
Victory or Death
Shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of December 26, 1776, the Continental Army started its charge on the city. Three columns marched through thick snow with Washington personally leading the middle charge. As the soldiers pushed forward, artillery began to fire.
2024 Year End Review
Michael, David and Cal discuss their readings from 2024 and goals for 2025.
A. Lincoln
"If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I may seize the nearest stick and kill it. But if I found that snake in bed with my children that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide."
Brains and Brawn 