Civil War quotes for the day

From Mosby's War Reminiscences:

• In anticipation of these events, a cavalry company had for some months been in process of organization, which I had joined as a private. This company— known as the Washington Mounted Rifles— was immediately called together (after Virginia had seceded) by its commanding officer, Captain William E. Jones. Captain Jones was a graduate of West Point, and had resigned some years before from the United States army. He was a stern disciplinarian, and devoted to duty. Under a rugged manner and impracticable temper he had had a heart that beat with warm impulses. To his inferiors in rank he was just and kind, but too much inclined to cross the wishes and criticize the orders of his superiors. He had been a classmate of Stonewall Jackson at the military academy, and related to me many anecdotes of Jackson's piety, as well as his eccentricities. Jones was a hard swearer; and, a few days after the Battle of Bull Run, he told me that he was at Jackson's headquarters when Jackson got very much provoked at something a soldier had done, and Jones said: "Jackson, let me cuss him for you."
• I recall vividly to mind the looks of surprise and the ominous shaking of the heads of the augurs when I told them that I proposed going farther North to begin the war again along the Potomac. Their criticism of my command was pretty much the same as that pronounced on the English mission to Kabul (in Afghanistan) some years ago— that it was too small for an army and too large for an embassy.
• In one sense the charge that I did not fight fair is true. I fought for success and not for display. There was no man in the Confederate army who had less of the spirit of knight-errantry in him, or took a more practical view of war than I did... I never admired, and did not imitate, the example of the commander who declined the advantage of the first fire. But, while I conducted war on the theory that the end of it was to secure peace by the destruction of the resources of the enemy, with as small a loss as possible to my own side, there is no authenticated act of mine which is not perfectly in accordance with approved military usage.
• When I rode up to Chapman, he had his gun already shotted. Mountjoy and Beattie were standing by it, their faces beaming with what the Romans called the gaudi caertaminis, and they had never looked so happy in their lives. As for myself, realizing the desperate straits we were in, I wished I was someplace else...
• War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first one than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country, but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it.
• Without intending any disparagement, I may say the the habits and education of Northern men had not been such as to adapt them readily to the cavalry service without a period of drilling; while, on the contrary, the Southern youth who, like the ancient Persians, had been taught from his cradle "to ride, to shoot, and speak the truth", leapt into his saddle almost a cavalryman from his birth.

Rico says he laments once owning an original hardcover copy of this book (now worth between $250 and $400, depending) and, foolishly, giving it away to a friend... (And, while there are plenty of Jones, including at least one William E., in his family tree, Rico thinks that the commander of the Washington Mounted Rifles is not, alas, a distant relative.)
The writer Jeff Cooper always used the phrase To ride, to shoot, and speak the truth as his signature line; knowing Cooper, he could have as easily taken it from the Persians as from Mosby...