Turning Points
Via Jonathan
During the drive on Washington city in July 1863, Confederate
sharpshooters were unknowingly presented with a particularly high-value
target. Captain Robert E. Park wrote: ‘The sharpshooters and the Fifth
Alabama, which supported them, were hotly engaged; some of this enemy,
seen behind their breastworks, were dressed in civilians’ clothes, and a
few had on linen coats. I suppose they were “Home Guards” composed of
Treasury, Post Office and other Department clerks.’ Park’s ‘Home Guards’
were in fact President Abraham Lincoln and his retinue, who had left
the White House to inspect the defences around Washington. A doctor
standing a few feet away from Lincoln was hit, and only prompt action by
a nearby Union officer in throwing the president to the ground
prevented a sudden and dramatic change in the course of Civil War
history.
— John Anderson Morrow,
The Confederate Whitworth Sharpshooters, 2002
[After the Battle of Belmont,] Grant went into a cabin and lay down on a
sofa to rest, but he was there only a moment. He got up almost
immediately to see what was happening on deck. As he rose a musket ball
cut cleanly through the boat’s wooden side and splintered the head of
the sofa where he had been lying. And still we waste ink and paper in
trying to prove that there is no such thing as luck!
— W.E. Woodward,
Meet General Grant, 1928
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