Funny / Trail of Glory

• Sam Houston's promotion after the Battle of Washington. The enemy general, who just lost, sends a demand that the defender of the Capitol be promoted. He figures it's less embarrassing to be beaten by an enemy general, or even a militia colonel, than a brevet-captain who just happened to be there.
• Sam tells Driscol that part of the Cherokee courting practice is to kill a deer and deliver it to the home of the lady in question, as a way of showing that you are capable of providing for her. Driscol does this... by shooting a deer with a cannon, wrapping it in a tarp and delivering its mangled body to Tiana's hotel room, utterly dismaying the hotel's owner over the ruined carpets.
• Andrew Jackson packs multiple hats to dramatically stomp.
• Driscoll's general terror of the "modern" (as in leeches, purging and belief that the skin color of different ethnicities is a form of hereditary leprosy) doctor whose been assigned to treat his wounds. At one point he introduces himself as on special duty to Washington and mentally notes it sounds better than "on medical leave, fleeing a doctor."
• Francis Scott Key writing The Star-Spangled Banner with different lyrics and mentally fuming about how Sam didn't think to fly the American flag, keeping him from putting in that line which he'd been quite proud of.
• Sam intimidating a local pro-slavery advocate in a way which includes slicing up the steak he's just been served with a bowie knife and delightedly commenting about how it's just the way he likes it while letting everyone see that the steak is barely cooked at all. As soon as he leaves and the people he was trying to scare aren't watching, Sam downs some whiskey to wrench the awful taste of that uncooked steak out of his mouth.
• A reporter using Exact Words while quoting a local boatman about Crittenden's freebooter army to make it sound like the man badmouthed them a lot more.
• Two of Crittenden's men who save their lives by offering valuable information note that:
  ''So the worst day in Ray Thompson's checkered life ended in a miracle. Two, actually. They didn't even get beaten after they were hauled aboard the steamboat. Well, nothing unreasonable, anyway.
• General Harrison's frustrations about the ridiculously slow march to the Arkansas Post (which is using the time to build it's defenses) in the second book. The marching goes slow and the militia keelboats keep running themsleves aground. When one of his men wishes they had oxen, Harrison is not amused.
  Harrison: Do you know how fast a team of oxen can pull a cannon? Any cannon, whether it's a four pounder or a siege gun?
  Lieutenant Fleming: Uh. No, sir. I don't.
  Harrison:' One. Mile. An. Hour. Which is just about what we're managing as it is.
• The general mockery of the incompetent (and highly detested) militias, such as noting how it seems like every single one of their officers is a self-appointed colonel. Jackson's description of the Georgia militias (which Harrison later decides was far too generous towards them) is:
  Jackson: Now [[Jackson's pet hound dog]], over there, is no lazier. The different is he don't drink, he don't gamble, he don't steal -well, not much; nothing compared to what a Georgian will- he don't rape all the womenfolk he can get his paws on, he don't sass you, he don't argue every blasted thing under the sun, and he don't run off in a panic every time a rooster crows or a cat hisses at him.
  Harrison: That bad?
  Jackson: That bad. The worst is they're also the biggest braggarts in the country. If you didn't know better, just listening to 'em, you'd swear that their forefathers whupped Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and their own martial accomplishments put those to shame. Southern valor, they call it. Bah. I wouldn't trade a whole company of Georgia militia for one Tennessean or two Kentuckians. Well, three Kentuckians. You always got to subtract one Kentuckian on account of the whiskey consumption.
• When the resident Hate Sink of Clay's cabinet is talking about how Jackson and his followers want to force interracial marriage, the Only Sane Man of the cabinet clarifies that they aren't saying that people have to marry outside their race, but just they can. To illustrate the example, he says that if he advocated legalizing divorce, that wouldn't mean that he was forcing the other man's wife to divorce him. He then proceeds to mentally add "Although the poor woman would probably thank me."