American history has no other character approaching his in vileness.

I doubt if the history of the world can show another man, so insignificant in abilities and position, at whose door can be laid such a terrible load of human misery.

There have been many great conquerors and warriors who have Waded through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, but they were great men, with great objects, with grand plans to carry out, whose benefits they thought would be more than an equivalent for the suffering they caused.

The misery they inflicted was not the motive of their schemes, but an unpleasant incident, and usually the sufferers were men of other races and religions, for whom sympathy had been dulled by long antagonism.
But Winder was an obscure, dull old man--the commonplace descendant of a pseudo-aristocrat whose cowardly incompetence had once cost us the loss of our National Capital.

More prudent than his runaway father, he held himself aloof from the field; his father had lost reputation and almost his commission, by coming into contact with the enemy; he would take no such foolish risks, and he did not.