“Another three sided argument occurred in the course of a congressional hearing in which a Commissary Department witness was so badgered by [Mississippi Representative to the Confederate Congress Henry S.] Foote that the two came to blows. Foote tore off his adversary’s shirt bosom, and when Commissary General Lucius B. Northrop came to the witness’s assistance Foote knocked him into a corner. According to some who despised Colonel Northrop, asserting that he was attempting to convert the southern armies to vegetarianism, this was Foote’s one real contribution to the Confederate war effort.”
– Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian