General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front, we had only one division, and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front." - Meaning and context.">
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Ulysses S. Grant, to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, as quoted in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1884-1888), edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence C. Buel, New York: Century Co., Volume 4, p. 548
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General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front, we had only one division, and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front.

— American Civil War

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front, we had only one division, and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front." in the context of "Ulysses S. Grant, to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, as quoted in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1884-1888), edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence C. Buel, New York: Century Co., Volume 4, p. 548" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "American Civil War" (Quotes, African Americans recruited for the U.S. Army (1863–1865), Contemporaries) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#American Civil War#general#front#put#division#colored#troops#meade#objections#burnside#properly#anything
American Civil War

About American Civil War

The American Civil War (ACW), also known as the War of the Rebellion, the Great Rebellion, and several other names, was a civil war that was fought in the United States of America from 1861 to 1865. Fearing that the future of slavery was in jeopardy after the election of an anti-slavery U.S. president, eleven slave-holding U.S. states located in the southern United States declared their secession from the country and formed the Confederate States, also known as "the Confederacy", sparking war. Led by Democrat Jefferson Davis, they fought against the United States, also known as "the Union", led by Republican Abraham Lincoln, which consisted of every free U.S. state as well as five slave-holding states, known as "border states". In 1865, after four years of warfare, the Confederacy surrendered, and slavery was abolished in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by three-fourths of the states.

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