Best 244 quotes in «civil war quotes» category

What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will.

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit.

What’s wrong with my clothing?' she asked, glancing down the length of her body, clothed in a tank top and shorts. He helped her up, unable to stifle a grin. 'Let’s just say women do not dress like that in 1863.

When the masses are against you, when fear is on every side, and when it seems like you are standing alone, that is when you should stand the tallest. That is when you plant yourself like a mountain, and you do what your heart knows is right. Even if death will be your only reward.

...While politicians contend, and men are swerved this way and that by conflicting tides of interest and passion, the great cause of human liberty is in the hands of one...who shall not fail nor be discouraged...

When we heard at first [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away" because he resisted the government. Which ways have they thrown their lives, pray? ---such would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by their enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not gain a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don;t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul- and what a soul!- when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than a quart of blood, but that is not the market heroes carry their blood to.

While adoration periodically crept into the relationships between slaves and overseers, their most unsavory interactions provided the inexplicable narrative for a dark period in American history.

While recruiting, Lieutenant Grace was often insulted by such remarks as, "There goes the captain of the Negro Company! He thinks the negroes will fight! They will turn and run at the first sight of the enemy!" His little son was scoffed at in school because his father was raising a negro company to fight the white men.

White Slaves: Chapter Three of “The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue” There were two distinctly different ways of looking at white mulattoes–socially and physiologically. Socially, a white partus slave looked as white as any white person but was considered a black person because he or she had “one drop” of black blood from a distant black female ancestor who was a slave. Such was the case when Mr. C. was told, “That’s not a white girl; she is a nigger, sir.” Physiologically speaking, however, white partus slaves were white people because all traits of their remote black ancestry had disappeared. The North saw these white slaves as whites. The South saw these white slaves as blacks. An 1857 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune commented on racial classification in the South. “The southern census takers, it is notorious, returned all persons as blacks who, were not more than half white. Those who possessed straight hair and Anglo-Saxon features they set down as mulattoes, many of whom were as white-skinned as their owners.” The actual number of white mulatto slaves is unknowable because all shades from “one drop” to those showing some discernible degree of black admixture were classed together as mulattoes without any distinction as to color.

While the post-Civil War southerners were pushing as fast as they could into the New South, were grasping Yankee dollars with enthusiasm, they purified their motives in the well of Lost Causism. Politicians found it a bottomless source of bombast and ballots, preachers found it balm and solace to somewhat reluctant middle-class morals, writers found it a noble and salable theme.

Why did the man who would become revered for generations as the Great Emancipator hesitate to do his "emancipating," and if it did take him so long, what is so "great" about that?

Why did people ignore the lessons of history and their own senses, deny a law of life immutable as the seasons, and erect twisted barriers against it in their minds? He didn't know why, but they did. They wept for the goodness of half-imaginary yesterdays, yesterdays beyond altering, instead of anticipating and helping to shape the good of possible tomorrows. They found things to blame for the flow of events they wanted to stop and could not. They blamed God, their wives, government, books, fanciful combinations of unnamed men--sometimes even voices in their own heads. They lived tortured and unhappy lives, trying to dam Niagara with a teacup.

With the music of our singing in the background, I looked at the church candles and thought about the surreal connection between images and memory. The peaceful and joyous candles flickering there during the Christmas ceremony projected warmth, comfort, and familiarity – even though thy emitted the same kind of fiery energy as the flames caused by the war.

A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.

You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Care for him who shall have borne the battle

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

Before this war is over, I intend to be a Major General or a corpse.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior ofcapital, and deserves muchthe higher consideration.

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.

Civil War was recorded by the original line-up

Conquer or be conquered.

Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time.

I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.

Do you see those colors? Take them!

Headquarters in the Saddle.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.

If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.

I know only two tunes: one of them is "Yankee Doodle" and the other isn't.

I like liquor - its taste and its effects - and that is just the reason why I never drink it.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped.

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration