They used to tell during the Civil War of a colonel who was
ordered to assault a position which his regiment, when they
had advanced far enough to get a good look at it, saw to be so
impossible that they fell back and became immovable. Whereupon
(so the story ran) the colonel, who took the same sense of the
situation that his command did, yet must do his duty, called out
in an ostensibly pleading and fervid voice: “Oh, don’t give it
up so! Forward again! Forward! Charge! Great heavens, men, do
you want to live forever?”--JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.
(1795)