19th Century In The United States

"The Civil War, a struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie of the North and the slave-owners of the South, did not achieve the real emancipation of the slaves. It is true that by an amendment to the federal constitution bourgeois-democratic rights were granted, supposedly to guarantee the new freedom. For the first time the Negroes were granted the right to vote, to hold public office, to obtain an equal education, which for a brief period were enforced by Negro militia and northern federal troops. But the northern bourgeoisie entered into a reapproachment with the overthrown southern plantation lords, thus deserting the property-less former slaves. The northern capitalists were unable to carry the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the war to the end, the taking of the land from the slave holders and giving it to the slaves. If this had been done, the former slaves would not have been forced to return to their former masters after their cowardly betrayal by the northern bourgeoisie, to obtain a livelihood."

"Corps, division, and post commanders will afford all facilities for the completion of the Negro regiments now organizing in this department. Commissioners will issue supplies, and quarter-masters will furnish stores, on the same requisitions and returns as are required for other troops. It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudices against them."

"We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the blacks of the south, whether we allow them to fight for us or not, or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that principle and honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is dispensable not only to the existence of our country to the well being of mankind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the land."

"The negro troops are easier to preserve discipline among than our white troops, and I doubt not will prove equally good for garrison duty. All that have been tried have fought bravely."

"On the first of January 1863, we held services for the purpose of listening to the reading of President Lincoln’s proclamation by Dr. W. H. Brisbane, and the presentation of two beautiful stands of colors, one from a lady in Connecticut, and the other from Rev. Mr. Cheever. The presentation speech was made by Chaplain French. It was a glorious day for us all, and we enjoyed every minute of it, and as a fitting close and the crowning event of this occasion we had a grand barbecue. A number of oxen were roasted whole, and we had a fine feast. Although not served as tastily or correctly as it would have been at home, yet it was enjoyed with keen appetites and relish. The soldiers had a good time. They sang or shouted 'Hurrah!' all through the camp, and seemed overflowing with fun and frolic until taps were sounded, when many, no doubt, dreamt of this memorable day."

"De darkeys feel so lonesome libbing in de loghouse on de lawn, Dey move dar tings into massa’s parlor for to keep it while he’s gone. Dar’s wine an’ cider in de kitchen, an’ de darkeys dey’ll have some; I s’pose dey’ll all be cornfiscated when de Linkum sojers come. De massa run, ha, ha! De darkey stay, ho, ho! It mus’ be now de kindom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo!"

"Lincoln and the Republican Party of the 1850s were able to mobilize a national majority against the expansion of slavery only because of the commitment the founders had made to the proposition that all men are created equal. The Republican opposition to slavery led to secession and civil war. After the border slave states had become committed to the war effort Lincoln took his earliest practical opportunity to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. From then on, the war for the Union became a war to abolish slavery."

"I have given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a great deal about it and profess to be very angry."

"Gone were the proud hopes, the high aspirations that swelled our bosoms a few days ago.... [The army] has strong limbs to march and meet the foe, stout arms to strike heavy blows, brave hearts to dare — but the brains, the brains! Have we no brains to use the arms and limbs and eager hearts with cunning?"

"I was in the woods May 2, 1862, when I saw your balloon about to rise. Then commenced a heavy cannonading from the Confederate works. Shots went out over our heads, tearing six branches from the trees. The balloon rose, and the firing was seen directed at the air target, shot after shot, shells exploding way up, and occasionally the sharp crack of a rifle would be heard when our sharpshooters took a chance shot - and it kept up for half a day. No damage was done, except slaughter of five old trees and great holes in the ground where the solid shot struck. At all times we were fully aware that you Federals were using balloons to examine our positions and we watched with envious eyes their beautiful observations as they floated high in the air, well out of range of our guns. While we were longing for balloons that poverty denied us, a genius arose and suggested that we send out and get every silk dress in the Confederacy to make a balloon. It was done and soon we had a great patchwork ship of many varied hues which was ready for use in the Seven Days Campaign. We had no gas except in Richmond and it was the custom to inflate the balloon there, tie it securely to an engine, and run it down the York River Railroad to any point at which we desired to send it up. One day it was on a steamer down the James River when the tide went out and left the vessel and the balloon high and dry on a bar. The federals gathered it in, and with it the last silk dress in the confederacy. This capture was the meanest trick of the war and one I have never yet forgiven."

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it."

"It is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the rebels, and on their own terms..."

"There is nothing like it on this side of the infernal region. The peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances can never be told. You have to feel it."

"Made from a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur, black powder is produced by pulverizing and mixing the ingredients, then rolling and pressing the material into cakes that are then dried into explosives for specific applications. Black powder was first brought to California in the late 1840s when miners used the explosive in their search for gold. At that time there were no local factories producing black powder. The miners relied on powder shipments from eastern U.S. and European companies. As the Civil War loomed in the U.S., it became a coveted commodity and the once reliable shipments became more scarce as the North and South stockpiled black powder in the event of war. By the time the Civil War began in April 1861, miners found themselves in desperate need of explosives, and John Baird, a miner from Kentucky, recruited investors to establish the California Powder Worksfactory near Santa Cruz, California. Up and running by 1864, the Powder Works factory was the sole manufacturer of black powder in the state. The company employed 275 Chinese workers and within a year produced 150,000 25-pound powder kegs."

"But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one in any way greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now having more than one free colored person to seven whites and this without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia and the States of Maryland and Delaware are all in this condition. The District has more than one free colored to six whites, and yet in its frequent petitions to Congress I believe it has never presented the presence of free colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should emancipation South send the free people North? People of any color seldom run unless there be something to run from. Hertofore colored people to some extent have fled North from bondage, and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution."

"I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."

"I will not consent to put the entire purse of the country and the sword of the country into the hands of the executive, giving him despotic and dictatorial power to carry out an object which I avow before my countrymen is the destruction of their liberties and the overthrow of the Union of these states....The charge has been made against us — all who are opposed to the policy of this administration and opposed to this war — that we are for 'peace on any terms.' It is false.... I am for peace, and would be, even if the Union could not be restored... because without peace, permitting this administration for two years to exercise its tremendous powers, the war still existing, you will not have one remnant of civil liberty left among yourselves. The exercise of these tremendous powers, the apology for which is the existence of this war, is utterly incompatible with the stability of the Constitution and of constitutional liberty."

"Neo-Confederates also won western Maryland. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) put a soldier on a pedestal at the Rockville courthouse. Montgomery County never seceded, of course. While Maryland did send 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, it sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Nevertheless, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: 'To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland / That we through life may not forget to love the Thin Gray Line'. In fact, the Thin Grey Line came through Montgomery and adjoining Frederick counties at least three times, en route to Antietam, Gettysburg and Washington. Lee's army expected to find recruits and help with food, clothing and information. They didn't. Maryland residents greeted Union soldiers as liberators when they came through on the way to Antietam. Recognizing the residents of Frederick as hostile, Confederate cavalry leader Jubal Early demanded and got $300,000 from them lest he burn their town, a sum equal to at least $5,000,000 today. Today, however, Frederick boasts what it calls the 'Maryland Confederate Memorial', and the manager of the Frederick cemetery — filled with Union and Confederate dead — told me in an interview, “Very little is done on the Union side” around Memorial Day. “It’s mostly Confederate.”"

"Take Kentucky. Kentucky's legislature voted not to secede, and early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found 'no enthusiasm as we imagined and hoped but hostility … in Kentucky.' Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones."

"A third of the south's population were black slaves, which might be used for manual labor but which could not be used as soldiers. After all, if the Confederates were to give their slaves weapons, how could they be sure the slaves wouldn't immediately turn them against those who enslaved them? Even worse, many of these blacks would join the Union army if they took control of the territory in which they lived... The Confederacy started its struggle for independence vastly outnumbered in terms of the number of soldiers, vastly inferior to the Union in terms of the industrial and financial power necessary to wage war, and lacking any fleet with which to combat the naval strength of the North. Given these facts, combined with the fact that the South did, indeed, lose the war in the end, I don't blame those who claim that the south never had a chance of winning."

"Every wolf in sheep’s clothing, who pretends to preach the gospel, but proclaims the righteousness of man-selling and slavery—everyone who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat. Every New York rioter in 1863, who burned up little children in colored asylums—who robbed, ravished and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, called himself a Democrat. In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason, North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age."

"Just after midnight on August 10, 1862, nearly 100 dismounted Confederate cavalry and state militia crept across the dry Texas Hill Country toward a campsite on the banks of the clear Nueces River, where 65 men slept, with just two on watch. Suddenly the dark silence was shattered by Confederate gunfire. Before sunset, those who had not escaped were dead or captured — and the captured were quickly executed."

"Yankee Doodle is no more, sunk his name and station. Nigger Doodle takes his place!"

"How are you my Abe? Is the list nearly filledOf the sick men and dying of wounded and killedOf widows and tears, or orphans unfedOf poor honest white men struggling for bread?'Dear Devil,' quoth Abe, 'I'm doing my bestTo promote the interest of you and the rest."

"Starting in 1861, anti-Civil War Democrats in the north were called 'copperheads' like the poisonous snake. The 'copperheads' wanted to appease the south and accept a negotiated peace, thereby, creating an independent Confederacy where blacks were kept in slavery. They also showed their deep opposition to the Civil War military conscription by verbally attacking Republican President Abraham Lincoln and taking their anger out on blacks, murdering and maiming blacks in virtually every northern state. Anti-Civil War Democrats in New York engaged in 'Four Days of Terror' against the city's black population from July 13 to 16 in 1863, and the anti-Civil War chant of the Democrats, as reported by one Pennsylvania newspaper, was, 'Willing to fight for Uncle Sam, but not for Uncle Sambo'."

"Woh-who-ey! Who-ey!"

"Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians."

"Soon the slopes... were swarming with our retreating and disorganized forces, while riderless horses and artillery [horse] teams ran furiously through the flying crowd. All further efforts were futile. The words, gestures, and threats of our officers were thrown away upon men who had lost all presence of mind, and only longed for absence of body [from the field of battle]."

"On May 18, 1861, a strange story appeared on the front page of Philadelphia Inquirer. The country was embroiled in a bloody civil war, nerves were running high, and a mechanical "monster," made of iron, had been discovered in the local harbor and seized by the police. It was a small submarine, built by the French inventor and immigrant Brutus de Villeroi, who was apparently searching for sunken treasure. The story caught the attention of the United States Navy, which was looking for a technological innovation to help them fight against the Confederate states' new ironclad ships. Submarines have a long history, but the Alligator was the U. S. Navy's first. The government contracted with Villeroi, who designed a bigger, 47-foot submarine. The initial design had oars, which looked like little legs and led to the sub's name, "Alligator." Later, the clumsy oars were replaced by a screw propeller turned by hand. The Alligator boasted many technological innovations. It had a device to clean the air of carbon dioxide, and a diver lockout chamber so that someone could exit the submarine under water and return. Unfortunately, it was lost at sea during a storm in 1863, before it ever got to see combat. The Alligator has been long forgotten and overshadowed by other submarines, like the Confederate CSS H. L. Hunley, which was built two years later."

"My dear McClellan. If you don't want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."

"I was left alone on horseback, with my men dropping around me.... My field [staff] officers... were all dead. Every horse ridden into the fight, my own among them, was dead. Fully one half of my line officers and half my men were dead or wounded."

"A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."

"Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa, wid de muffstash on his face? Go long de road some time dis mornin’, like he gwine to leab de place? He seen a smoke way up de ribber, whar de Linkum gunboats lay; He took his hat, and lef’ berry sudden, and I spec’ he’s run away! De massa run, ha, ha! De darkey stay, ho, ho! It mus’ be now de kindom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo!"

"He six foot one way, two foot tudder, and he weigh tree hundred pound, His coat so big, he couldn’t pay the tailor, an’ it won’t go halfway round. He drill so much dey call him Cap’n, an’ he got so drefful tanned, I spec’ he try an’ fool dem Yankees for to tink he’s contraband. De massa run, ha, ha! De darkey stay, ho, ho! It mus’ be now de kindom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo!"

"De obserseer he make us trouble, an’ he dribe us round a spell; We lock him up in de smokehouse cellar, wid de key trown in de well. De whip is lost, de han’cuff broken, but de massa’ll hab his pay; He’s ole enough, big enough, ought to known better dan to went an’ run away. De massa run, ha, ha! De darkey stay, ho, ho! It mus’ be now de kindom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo!"

"Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress."

"We'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more, shouting the battle cry of freedom!"

"So rally, boys, rally, let us never mind the past. We had a hard road to travel, but our day is coming fast. For God is for the right, and we have no need to fear. The Union must be saved by the colored volunteer... Then here is to the 54th, which has been nobly tried. They were willing, they were ready, with their bayonets by their side, Colonel Shaw led them on and he had no cause to fear about the courage of the colored volunteer."

"More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis. I will not argue. To do so implies hesitation and doubt, and you do not hesitate. You do not doubt. The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon! The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men."

"We do not even inquire whether a black man is a rebel in arms or not; if he is black, be he friend or foe, he is thought best kept at a distance. It is hardly possible God will let us succeed while such enormities are 'practiced."

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'U.S.'; let him get an edge on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

"I am anxious to get as many of these negro regiments as possible, and to have them full, and completely equipped. I am particularly desirous of organizing a regiment of heavy artillery from the negroes, to garrison this place, and shall do so as soon as possible."

"Many persons believed, or pretended to believe, and confidently asserted, that freed slaves would not make good soldiers; they would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend, at the assault upon Port Hudson, and the storming of Fort Wagner. The apt qualifications of the colored man for artillery service have long been known and recognized by the naval service."

"We congratulate the American people upon your reelection by a large majority. If resistance to the slave power was the reserved watchword of your first administration, the triumphant war cry of your reelection is 'Death to slavery.'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....The workingmen of Europe feel sure that as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American antislavery war will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded so of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world."

"Negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of the United States."

"What have you asked the black men of the South, the black men of the whole country, to do? Why, you have asked them to incur the deadly enmity of their masters, in order to befriend you and to befriend this Government. You have asked us to call down, not only upon ourselves, but upon our children’s children, the deadly hate of the entire Southern people. You have called upon us to turn our backs upon our masters, to abandon their cause and espouse yours; to turn against the South and in favor of the North; to shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag—the American flag. You have called upon us to expose ourselves to all the subtle machinations of their malignity for all time."

"Without the military help of the black freedman, the war against the South could not have been won."

"Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty. I admit that it is perilous to confer the franchise upon the ignorant and degraded; but if an educational test cannot be established, let suffrage be extended to all men of proper age, regardless of color. It may well be questioned whether the negro does not understand the nature of our institutions better than the equally ignorant foreigner. He was intelligent enough to understand from the beginning of the war that the destiny of his race was involved in it. He was intelligent enough to be true to that Union which his educated and traitorous master was endeavoring to destroy. He came to us in the hour of our sorest need, and by his aid, under God, the Republic was saved."

"My confidence in General Grant was not entirely due to the brilliant military successes achieved by him, but there was a moral as well as military basis for my faith in him. He had shown his single-mindedness and superiority to popular prejudice by his prompt cooperation with President Lincoln in his policy of employing colored troops, and his order commanding his soldiers to treat such troops with due respect. In this way he proved himself to be not only a wise general, but a great man, one who could adjust himself to new conditions, and adopt the lessons taught by the events of the hour... The war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro."

"The Confederate experience is dotted with episodes that are not particularly admirable."