George Cary Eggleston Quotes
It is impossible to say precisely when the conviction became general in the South that we were to be beaten. I cannot even decide at what time I myself began to think the cause a hopeless one, and I have never yet found one of my fellow-Confederates, though I have questioned many of them, who could tell me with any degree of certainty the history of his change from confidence to despondency. We schooled ourselves from the first to think that we should ultimately win, and the habit of thinking so was too strong to be easily broken by adverse happenings. Having undertaken to make good our declaration of independence, we refused to admit, even to ourselves, the possibility of failure. It was a part of our soldierly and patriotic duty to believe that ultimate success was to be ours
Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view. Here he reveals that the Confederacy had developed a culture of positivism about winning the Civil War in which it was unpatriotic to consider reality. This caused the war to go on longer than was rational from a Southern military and economic point of view.
George Cary Eggleston, 1839-1911, Writer & Confederate Soldier, “A Rebel's Recollections”, The Atlantic Monthly, 1874
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Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
That is the way he was killed. The phrase, “We are bound to believe that, anyhow” indicates that Stuart really realized how futile the Southern war effort would be but loyalty and patriotism required him to suspend his rational belief structure.
George Cary Eggleston American author and brother of fellow author Edward Eggleston (1837–1902). Sons of Joseph Cary Eggleston and Mary Jane Craig. After the American Civil War he published a serialized account of his time as a Confederate soldier in The Atlantic Monthly. These serialized articles were later collected and expanded upon and published under the title "A Rebel's Recollections."
