Grenville Dodge: “I read between the lines and learned what was expected of me.”

There was no strategy nor tactics in this battle; it was simply men standing up and giving and taking, and the one that stood the longest won the battle.

This campaign demonstrated early in the war what could be accomplished by a small Army 300 miles away from any rail or water communication, in a rugged, mountainous, sparsely settled county, marching in winter, and virtually subsisting…

We opened with thirty-two guns; they answered with as many, and such a roar you never heard.

We had lost our best friend,--that superb soldier, our commander, General McPherson; his death counted so much more to us than victory that we spoke of our battle, our great success, with our loss uppermost in our minds.