Quotes About the War Between the States
... every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late.We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold most sacred ... personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood.It means that the history ofthis heroic struggle will be written by the enemy;that ouryouth will be trained by Northern school teachers;will learn from Northern school books their version of the War, will be impressed by all influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for their derision, it means the crushing of Southern manhood ... to establish sectional superiority and a more centralised form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.
-Patrick Cleburne
(General C.S.A.) January 2 1864[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions... are the general opinions of the English nation.
-London Times
November 7, 1861LET THE STRANGER WHO MAY IN FUTURE TIME READ THIS INSCRIPTION, AND RECOGNIZE THAT THERE WERE MEN, WHOM POWER COULD NOT CORRUPT, DEATH COULD NOT TERRIFY, DEFEAT COULD NOT DISHONOR;LET THESE VIRTUES PLEAD FOR JUST JUDGMENT IN THE CAUSE -- FOR WHICH THEY PERISHED. -- LET GEORGIA REMEMBER THAT THE STATE TAUGHT THEM HOW TO LIVE AND HOW TO DIE;AND THAT FROM HER BROKEN FORTUNES, SHE HAS PRESERVED FOR HER CHILDREN, THE PRICELESS TREASURE OF HER MEMORIES, TEACHING ALL WHO MAY CLAIM THE SAME BIRTHRIGHT, THAT TRUTH, VIRTUE AND PATRIOTISM ENDURE FOREVER.
-Bartow County Confederate Monument
Measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.
-Abraham Lincoln
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
-Abraham Lincoln
(Happiness)So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world. ...they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.
-Ambassador Adams
(Excerpt from his reply to Marx's letter to Lincoln)God alone knows the future, but only a historian can alter the past.
-Ambrose Bierce
The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.
-Charles Dickens
(On the War Between the States)If I tap that little bell, I can send you to a place where you will never hear the dogs bark.
-Edwin Stanton
(Secretary of War, to a man demanding release of a friend arrested for treason)Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an antislavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border Slave States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity.
-Frederick Douglass
Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in a civil war. If it cannot live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it.
-James Buchanan
(President) December 6 1860After studying more than 270,000 Confederate documents, seeking evidence against Davis, the court discouraged the War Department:'Davis will be found not guilty,' Lieber reported 'and we shall stand there completely beaten'.
-Lieber
From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class.. Lincoln is the single-minded son of the working class, who has lead his country to the matchless struggle for the rescue of the communist revolution and the reconstruction of the social order.
-Marx
(Excerpt from his letter to Lincoln)Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them;nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle;and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.
-Richard Henry Lee
If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North;for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion... His (Jeff Davis') capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.
-Salmon P. Chase
(Chief Justice, to Edwin Stanton)None of [Lincoln's] public acts, either before or after he became President, exhibits any special tenderness for the African race. On the contrary, he invariably, in words and deeds, postponed the interests of the blacks to the interests of the whites, and expressly subordinated the one to the other. When he was compelled, by what he deemed an overruling necessity, founded on both military and political considerations, to declare the freedom of the public enemy's slaves, he did so with avowed reluctance, and took pains to have it understood that his resolution was in no wise affected by sentiment.
-Ward Hill Lamon
(Close friend of Lincoln)President Lincoln zealously and persistently devised schemes for the deportation of the negroes, which the latter deemed cruel and atrocious in the extreme.
-Ward Hill Lamon
(Close friend of Lincoln)I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen in New York;and no power on earth, except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?
-William Seward
(Secretary of State, to Lord Lyons)I believe the practice of slavery in the South is the mildest and best regulated system of slavery in the world now or heretofore.