American Civil War

"I have fought a long battle with slavery; and I confess my solicitude when I see any thing that looks like concession to it. It is not enough to show me that a measure is expedient: you must show me also that it is right. Ah, sir, can any thing be expedient which is not right? From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials: it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles. It cannot be found by inserting in your constitution the disfranchisement of a race."

"During the late contest for the Union, the air was full of 'nevers', every one of which was contradicted and put to shame by the result, and I doubt not that most of those we now hear in our troubled air will meet the same fate. It is probably well for us that some of our gloomy prophets are limited in their powers to prediction... Southern gentlemen who led in the late rebellion have not parted with their convictions at this point, any more than at any other. They want to be independent of the negro. They believed in slavery and they believe in it still. They believed in an aristocratic class, and they believe in it still. Though they have lost slavery, one element essential to such a class, they still have two important conditions to the reconstruction of that class. They have intelligence, and they have land. Of these, the land is the more important. They cling to it with all the tenacity of a cherished superstition. They will neither sell to the negro, nor let the carpet-bagger have it in peace, but are determined to hold it for themselves and their children forever. They have not yet learned that when a principle is gone, the incident must go also; that what was wise and proper under slavery is foolish and mischievous in a state of general liberty; that the old bottles are worthless when the new wine has come; but they have found that land is a doubtful benefit, where there're no hands to till it."

"Under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more."

"We must make the Negro our friend... We can do this if we will. Should we make him our enemy under the prompting of the Yankees, whose aim is to force us to recognize him on a basis of equality, then our path lies through a way red with blood and damp with tears..."

"The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes."

"I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the negro slave set free by the proclamation of President Lincoln. I am at a loss to understand how you Americans could have been so blind as to leave the negro slave without tools to work out his salvation. In giving him personal liberty, you have him an obligation to perform to the state which he must be unable to fulfill. Without property of any kind he cannot educate himself and his children. I believe the time must come when many will question the manner of American emancipation of the negro slaves in 1863. The vote, in the hands of an ignorant man, without either property or self respect, will be used to the damage of the people at large; for the rich man, without honor or any kind of patriotism, will purchase it, and with it swamp the rights of a free people."

"Twenty years have passed since that event; it is almost too new in history to make a great impression, but the time will come when it will loom up as one of the greatest of man's achievements, and the name of Abraham Lincoln — who of his own will struck the shackles from the limbs of four millions of people — will be honored thousands of years from now as man's name was never honored before."

"For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man."

"Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true."

"On Palm Sunday, at Appomattox Court House, the spirit of feudalism, of aristocracy, of injustice in this country, surrendered, in the person of Robert E. Lee, the Virginian slave-holder, to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of equal rights, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois tanner. So closed this great campaign in the 'Good Fight of Liberty'. So the Army of the Potomac, often baffled, struck an immortal blow, and gave the right hand of heroic fellowship to their brethren of the west. So the silent captain, when all his lieutenants had secured their separate fame, put on the crown of victory and ended civil war. As fought the Lieutenant-General of the United States, so fight the United States themselves, in the 'Good Fight of Man'. With Grant's tenacity, his patience, his promptness, his tranquil faith, let us assault the new front of the old enemy. We, too, must push through the enemy's Wilderness, holding every point we gain. We, too, must charge at daybreak upon his Spottsylvania Heights. We, too, must flank his angry lines and push them steadily back. We, too, must fling ourselves against the baffling flames of Cold Harbor. We, too, outwitting him by night, must throw our whole force across swamp and river, and stand entrenched before his capital. And we, too, at last, on some soft, auspicious day of spring, loosening all our shining lines, and bursting with wild battle music and universal shout of victory over the last desperate defense, must occupy the very citadel of caste, force the old enemy to final and unconditional surrender, and bring Boston and Charleston to sing Te Deum together for the triumphant equal rights of man."

"Last Wednesday the citizens of this city and vicinity, native Texans, assembled in the fairgrounds to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary if the liberation of the bonded Afro-American of Texas. After indulging in various pleasures, they were called to the sumptuous repasts that were spread by our energetic ladies and our worthy citizen and coadjuntor, R. B. Floyd. At 3:30 the people were called together in the amphitheater to hear the speakers of the day. The exercises were opened by the song, “Hold the Fort,” led by Presiding Elder, A. M. Ward; prayer, led by Rev. J. R. Ransom; 'John Brown's Body' was then led by Rev. Ward; E. W. Dorsey then stated why the 19th of June was celebrated. He was followed by S. O. Clayton, who in an address of twenty minutes delivered volumes of words which were impregnated with varied and bright thoughts. Closely following the speakers an animated game of base ball was witnessed; when the happy throng repaired to their homes expressing themselves highly pleased with their first Juneteenth celebration"

"I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery, a soldier fights for his country, right or wrong, he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in. The South was my country."

"For every six slaves who were freed, approximately one soldier was killed; for every ten white Southerners who were held in the Union, one Yank or one Reb died. A person is entitled to wonder whether the Southerners could not have been held and the slaves could not have been freed at a smaller per-capita cost. Certainly few would have purchased these gains at the time if they ahd known the price, and the mere fact that it has already been paid is not a reason for historians to let it go without questioning now."

"His explorable thrust against Lee rested upon the same basic advantage that enabled the Russian armies to move as inexorably in 1944-45 against the Germans: heavily superior numbers, greater length of line, and utterly heedless sacrifice of lives."

"On the other hand, the postponement of emancipation for a generation [if slavery could have been peacefully abolished in that amount of time], while saving the lives of soldiers, would have enacted its own price. It would have meant that the four million slaves of 1860, as well as their descendants, would have remained in bondage until the forces anticipated by the revisionists [historians such as Potter] moved white masters in their own good time to grant freedom to their black laborers. How to balance the lives of half a million soldiers against the prolonged bondage of four million slaves is a question with profound moral implications; how one resolves it will doubtless depend in part on one’s judgement of slavery itself."

"The military strategies by which the North won the Civil War were quite horrible. Grant’s strategy was to fight a war of attrition, slaughtering as many troops as possible on both sides, because he knew the less numerous Confederates would run out of men first. Sherman campaigned through the enemy’s relatively defenseless heart-land, leaving a demoralizing trail of devestation, poverty, and starvation behind him. Before Grant and Sherman took command, the North had been doing quite badly on the battlefield; together their strategies won the war. Now the experiment: suppose that you had it in your power to change history, so that the war would never have been fought, and slavery would still be with us. Would you exercise that power? Can you confidently say that the innocent lives sacrificed to abolish slavery were too high a price to pay? If you cannot, then you are not confident that ending involuntary servitude is “never” worth taking innocent lives."

"After the civil war, the south continued to pass restrictive firearms laws in order to deprive the newly freed blacks from exercising their rights of citizenship... After the conclusion of the American Civil War, several southern legislatures adopted comprehensive regulations, Black Codes, by which the new freed men were denied many of the rights that white citizens enjoyed."

"There are all kinds of myths that a people has about itself, some positive, some negative, some healthy and some not healthy. I think that one job of the historian is to try to cut through some of those myths and get closer to some kind of reality. So that people can face their current situation realistically, rather than mythically. I guess that's my sense of what a historian ought to do."

"The end of slavery in 1865 did not eliminate the problems of racist gun control laws; the various Black Codes adopted after the Civil War required blacks to obtain a license before carrying or possessing firearms or Bowie knives; these are sufficiently well-known that any reasonably complete history of the Reconstruction period mentions them. These restrictive gun laws played a part in the efforts of the Republicans to get the Fourteenth Amendment ratified, because it was difficult for night riders to generate the correct level of terror in a victim who was returning fire. It does appear, however, that the requirement to treat blacks and whites equally before the law led to the adoption of restrictive firearms laws in the South that were equal in the letter of the law, but unequally enforced. It is clear that the vagrancy statutes adopted at roughly the same time, in 1866, were intended to be used against blacks, even though the language was race-neutral. The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had recognized the right to carry arms openly before the civil war, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control laws, is Texas."

"Leaders of such a catastrophe must account for themselves. Justification is necessary. Those who followed their leaders into the catastrophe required similar rationalization. Clement A. Evans, a Georgia veteran who at one time commanded the United Confederate Veterans organization, said this: 'If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country.'"

"The social and economic system based on chattel slavery that the seceding states had sought to protect lay in ruins. The inviolability of the Union, most of the loyal citizenry’s pre-eminent concern throughout the conflict, was confirmed on the battlefield. In the longer term, preservation of the Union made possible the American economic and political colossus of the next century."

"I yield to no one precedence in love for the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy."

"Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so."

"In the wake of Reconstruction a growing number of southerners began to argue that protecting slavery had not been the real cause of the war, and some even claimed that slavery was in fact a just institution. These ideas spread and grew into the 'Lost Cause' movement, a romantic vision of the South that would eventually gain exposure from the popularity of films including Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind."

"The Revolution was about creating a new system of government built on new principles while the secessionists were trying to maintain the same government that they said was oppressing them and building it on the principle of slavery. The Revolutionaries spoke of not wanting to be slaves while the secessionists spoke of wanting to maintain slaves. That paradox just keeps coming up all the time. How do you have a country built on liberty, equality, and freedom while at the same time you enslave your fellow man, deny equality based on gender and race, and say you are a nation of free people? This is why I personally say the Revolution has not ended. It certainly had not ended in 1861 because the Civil War and more specifically the struggle to end slavery in America was part of the egalitarian process set forth by the Revolution itself. It is still ongoing today because of the need to firmly establish equality today. The Civil War did not have to be a war. Slavery was going to end in some manner via legislation at some point, but the slave owners chose war instead. The results were different directly due to those slave owners making that choice. Everything they opposed came to pass with far, far worse consequences for them and the country as a whole had they not chosen to fight a war in order to perpetuate the expansion of slavery in America."

"The civil war ended on May 10, 1865, at Irwinville, Georgia. It was then and there that President Jefferson Davis, who personified the Confederacy more than any other single individual, was finally run to ground and captured by Union cavalry. Having fled Richmond on April 2, he was heading westward with the vain hope of continuing the fight against the Yankees in the Trans-Mississippi. By then, he had been deserted by all but his loyal wife and a handful of escorting cavalrymen. With the capture of Davis, the last flame flickering on behalf of Southern independence was well and truly snuffed out."

"Why should we as Texans want to be reminded of a legalized system of involuntary servitude, dehumanization, rape, mass murder?"

"In the 1950s, the battle flag was revived not just as a symbol of resistance to federally mandated desegregation. The stars and bars was also a symbol of terror: of the violent intimidation of African Americans who dared assert their rights. The stars and bars promised lynching, police violence against protestors and others. And violence against churches. SC's state flag is a flag of slavery. But it is also a flag of terrorism. That terror is among other things anti-religious and particularly, anti-Christian. Churches have been bombed & burned for what it symbolizes. Ministers, worshippers, people singing hymns have been attacked time and time again by those who serve it and those who wave it. So here we are again. SC may lower the pro-terrorism, proslavery, anti-religious flag to half mast for a day. But they plan to raise it again."

"I have no respect for your ancestors. As far as your ancestors are concerned, I shouldn't be a law professor at Georgetown. I should be a slave. That's why they fought that war. I don't understand what it means to be proud of a legacy of terrorism and violence. Last week at this time, I was in Israel. The idea that a German would say, you know, that thing we did called the Holocaust, that was wrong, but I respect the courage of my Nazi ancestors, that wouldn't happen. The reason people can say what you said in the United States is because, again, black life just doesn't matter to a lot of people."

"That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I will put him through. That will be the last speech he will ever make."

"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages."

"As to Mr. Lincoln's name and fame and memory, — all is safe. His firmness, moderation, goodness of heart; his quaint humor, his perfect honesty and directness of purpose; his logic his modesty his sound judgment, and great wisdom; the contrast between his obscure beginnings and the greatness of his subsequent position and achievements; his tragic death, giving him almost the crown of martyrdom, elevate him to a place in history second to none other of ancient or modern times. His success in his great office, his hold upon the confidence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all say are only second to Washington’s; we shall probably feel and think that they are not second even to his."

"I have ever held the South was right. The very nomination of Abraham Lincoln, four years ago, spoke plainly war upon Southern rights and institutions... And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution, I for one, have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation… I have also studied hard to discover upon what grounds the right of a State to secede has been denied, when our very name, United States, and the Declaration of Independence, both provide for secession!"

"We admired and loved him on many accounts, for strong and various reasons. We admired his childlike simplicity, his freedom from guile and deceit, his staunch and sterling integrity, his kind and forgiving temper, his industry and patience, his persistent, self-sacrificing devotion to all the duties of his eminent position, from the least to the greatest; his readiness to hear and consider the cause of the poor and humble, the suffering and the oppressed; his charity toward those who questioned the correctness of his opinions and the wisdom of his policy; his wonderful skill in reconciling differences among the friends of the Union, leading them away from abstractions, and inducing them to work together and harmoniously for the common weal; his true and enlarged philanthropy, that knew no distinction of color or race, but regarded all men as brethren, and endowed alike by their Creator 'with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'; his inflexible purpose that what freedom had gained in our terrible civil strife should never be lost, and that the end of the war should be the end of slavery, and, as a consequence, of rebellion; his readiness to spend and be spent for the attainment of such a triumph, a triumph, the blessed fruits of which shall be as wide-spreading as the earth and as enduring as the sun, all these things commanded and fixed our admiration and the admiration of the world, and stamped upon his character and life the unmistakable impress of greatness."

"The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator... Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever."

"Within that door A man sits or the image of a man Staring at stillness on a marble floor. No drum distracts him nor no trumpet can Although he hears the trumpet and the drum. He listens for the time to come. Within this door A man sits or the image of a man Remembering the time before. He hears beneath the river in its choking channel A deeper river rushing on the stone, Sits there in his doubt alone, Discerns the Principle, The guns begin, Emancipates—but not the slaves, The Union—not from servitude but shame: Emancipates the Union from the monstrous name Whose infamy dishonored Even the great Founders in their graves … He saves the Union and the dream goes on."

"White southerners saw Lincoln as anti-slavery and his election as a direct threat to the survival of the peculiar institution. Are you going to tell me that they were stupid or deluded? Is that any way for white southerners to honor their ancestors, by ridiculing their intelligence? Indeed, Stephen Douglas' decision to accuse Lincoln of embracing racial equality tells us that playing the race, or racism, card in the 1850s was alive and well, because Douglas believed that he would gain political traction among racist Illinois voters, who were white, after all, by associating Lincoln with the cause of black equality. Lincoln's response was thus also an issue of political survival. So was his decision not to publicize his support for limited black suffrage in Louisiana in 1864. He advanced the idea in a private letter, but waited thirteen months until he made his sentiment public, and three days after he made that sentiment public, he fell victim to an assassin's bullet because that assassin could not bear the thought of black equality. Lincoln knew he lived in a racist America, north and south."

"Abraham Lincoln's assassination. This sickening act of violence, when added to all the others, brought a definitive feeling that an era had ended, as surely as Lincoln's election in November 1860 had precipitated it. The funeral train that carried Lincoln's remains home to Springfield, Illinois, drew millions, and while the tragedy felt senseless, it also offered the nation a chance to mourn something much larger than the death of a single individual. To the end, Lincoln served a higher cause."

"In eighteen hundred and sixty-one, ... That was when the war begun, ... In eighteen hundred and sixty-two, Both sides were falling to, ... In eighteen hundred and sixty-three, ... Abe Lincoln set the darkies free, ... In eighteen hundred and sixty-four, ... Abe called for five hundred thousand more, ... In eighteen hundred and sixty-five, They talked rebellion—strife; And we'll all drink stone wine When Johnny comes marching home."

"In this country the law in effect in all but a few States until mid-19th century was the pre-existing English common law . . . . It was not until after the War Between the States [1861-1865] that legislation began generally to replace the common law."

"“I mean, again, I think that as we look in government, as we watch government, you have different sides, and I think that you see passions on different sides, and I don’t think anyone does anything out of hate,” Haley said. “I think what they do is, they do things out of tradition and out of beliefs of what they believe is right.” “I think you have one side of the Civil War that was fighting for tradition, and I think you have another side of the Civil War that was fighting for change,” she added. “You know, at the end of the day, what I think we need to remember is that you know, everyone is supposed to have their rights, everyone is supposed to be free, everyone is supposed to have the same freedoms as anyone else. So, you know I think it was tradition versus change is the way I see it. “Tradition versus change on what,” asked the interviewer. “On individual rights and liberty of people,” she responded."

"War to the hilt, theirs be the guilt, who fetter the free man to ransom the slave."

"This fight is against slavery; if 'we lose it, you will be made free; if we whip the fight, and you stay with me and be good boys, I will set you free; in either case you will be free."

"The 'Southern Cross' holds its place steadily in the Southern heart. It was in every mouth long before the war began; it remains in spite of all arguments against it. These arguments are ridiculous. First, we don’t see the Southern Cross in the heavens. Indeed! Do the British see the lion and the unicorn on the land or in the sea? Do the Austrians behold the double headed eagle anywhere in nature or out of it? What has seeing got to do with it? The truth is, we shall see the Southern Cross ere the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave is accomplished. That destiny does not stop short of the banks of the Amazon. The world of wonders in the animal and vegetable kingdom, of riches incalculable in the vast domain, watered by that gigantic stream, is the natural heritage of the Southron and his domestic slave. They alone can achieve its conquest and lay its untold wealth a tribute at the feet of commerce, the Queen consort of King Cotton."

"No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country."

"The General Assembly shall have power to tax the lands and slaves of non-residents higher than the like property of residents."

"The General Assembly shall have power to create special tribunals for the trial of offenses committed by slaves, free negroes and mulattoes; and until the General Assembly otherwise provides, there is hereby created a Court in each county, which shall consist of two Justices of the Peace, and twelve citizens, being qualified Jurors of the county, who shall have power to try all cases of felony committed in their county by slaves, free negroes and mulattoes. A majority of said Court may pronounce judgment, and all trials before it shall be had upon the statement of the offense in the warrant of arrest, and without presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury. The Sheriff of the county shall act as the ministerial officer of said Court, and the citizens who, with the Justices, are to compose the same, shall be selected by said Justices and summoned to attend by the Sheriff; and appeals from the judgment of said Court shall be had to the Circuit Court of the county upon an order made by the Judge thereof, upon an inspection of the record of the trial, full minutes of which shall be made by the said Justices, and such appeal, when allowed, shall operate as a supersedeas of the judgment."

"The General Assembly shall, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and every tenth year thereafter, cause an enumeration to be made of all the inhabitants of the State, and to the whole number of free white inhabitants shall be added three-fifths of the number of slaves, and they shall then proceed to apportion the representation equally among the different counties, according to such enumeration, giving, however, one representative to every county, and increasing the number of representatives on a uniform ratio of population, according to the foregoing basis, and which ratio shall not be changed until a new census shall have been taken."

"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves."

"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."