Rebs on Yanks

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

“I had rather be dead than to see the Yanks rule this country.”

Jesse Person, 1st North Carolina Cavalry, in a letter to his sister, August 21, 1862. Person was killed the next year at Gettysburg.

“These Yankees had heavy cloth and cassimere uniforms, and many of them heavy army overcoats—everything, in fact, necessary to their comfort—while their victorious escort were clothed in coarse homespun, with wool hats on their heads. It was a striking illustration of that great truth that fine clothes do not make men honest, moral, wise or great; if it were so, these Yankees would never had been found in arms against us.”

A soldier in the 19th Georgia Infantry, on observing Union prisoners being escorted under guard, in a letter to an Atlanta newspaper, October 27, 1861

Library of Congress

Union soldier in an overcoat

“When a Yankee does run, he can outrun anybody, and there is no use in trying to catch him by a stern chase, you have either to head him off or give it up as a hopeless case.”

A soldier from the Army of Northern Virginia, on the band of Pennsylvania militia he and his comrades drove off on their march to Gettysburg, in a letter to the Savannah Republican, July 20, 1863

Duke University Libraries Digital Collections

John B. Magruder

“Our enemy, dead to the spirit of liberty, can only fight while their coffers are unexhausted. Commerce is their king. Their god is gold. They glory in their shame.”

Major General John Bankhead Magruder (above), in a circular distributed to his men stationed in Yorktown, Virginia, March 4, 1862

“I think those people make the most delicious bread I ever tasted.”

A Confederate soldier on the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers he and his comrades encountered on their march to Gettysburg, in a letter to an Alabama newspaper, July 18, 1863