Politicians From Ohio

"I. The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department. II. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order by Post Commanders, they will see that all of this class of people are furnished with passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification, will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners unless furnished with permits from these Head Quarters. III. No permits will be given these people to visit Head Quarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits."

"I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however, that though such people make a great noise the masses are not like them."

"No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works."

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on."

"My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all Constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go."

"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."

"Caste has no foothold in Santo Domingo. It is capable of supporting the entire colored population of the United States, should it choose to emigrate. The present difficulty, in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists. The colored man cannot be spared until his place is supplied, but with a refuge like San Domingo his worth here would soon be discovered, and he would soon receive such recognition to induce him to stay; or if Providence designed that the two races should not live to-gether he would find his home in the Antilles."

"No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted."

"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

"In all this I can see but the doom of slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance."

"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."

"I don't know why black skin may not cover a true heart as well as a white one."

"Pete, let us have another game of brag, to recall the days that were so pleasant."

"You must take it; I cannot live with anything in my possession that is not mine."

"We are responsible for these things in his race. It is not fair to visit our faults upon him, let him alone."

"General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front, we had only one division, and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front."

"The will of the people is the best law."

"I only know two tunes. One is Yankee Doodle, and the other one isn't."

"I don't underrate the value of military knowledge, but if men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail."

"My lord, I have heard that your father was a military man. Was that the case?"

"Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences, instead of keeping large standing armies as they do in Europe."

"He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it."

"Grant's empathy for the former slaves was genuine... Racism would be a formidable obstacle in the path to ratification. Grant knew it. Fish knew it, felt it, and sensed it among politicians both within and outside his administration."

"Grant imagined that annexation would provide a safety valve for the country and a safe haven for African Americans."

"Grant was in the first rank of American heroes, alongside Washington and Lincoln."

"He's the quietest little fellow you ever saw. He makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew. I believe he had been in this room a minute or so before I knew he was here. Grant is the first general I have had. You know how it's been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, they all wanted me to be the general. Now it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know and I don't want to know. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first general I've had that didn't."

"They will never shoulder a musket again in anger, and if Grant is wise, he will leave them their guns to shoot crows with and their horses to plow with. It would do no harm."

"After the failure of his first experimental explorations around Vicksburg, a committee of abolition war managers waited upon the President and demanded the General’s removal, on the false charge that he was a whiskey drinker, and little better than a common drunkard. “Ah!” exclaimed Honest Old Abe, “you surprise me, gentlemen. But can you tell me where he gets his whiskey?” “We cannot, Mr. President. But why do you desire to know?” “Because, if I can only find out, I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army.”"

"I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong."

"If Grant only does this thing right down there, I don't care how, so long as he does it right. Why, Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the war!"

"I can't spare this man--he fights."

"Grant's desire to annex and eventually make a state of Santo Domingo can seem oddly progressive, which is not to excuse the self-righteous paternalism, nationalist exceptionalism, or economic shadiness that lay behind his annexationism. But anti-racism was among the principal goals of his initiative... In that respect, his hope that whites might one day overcome their irrational anti-black prejudices so that the United States could prosper as a multi-racial nation is all the more impressive."

"Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university."

"Grant has shown himself an active, honest advocate of the negro and their friend."

"Thousands had journeyed to Washington from out of town. The hotels were sold out, even after filling their hallways and lobbies with extra beds. The visitors, not a few of whom employed whiskey against the cold, waited all along the avenue to salute the Civil War hero they had re-elected the previous November.No group cheered Grant more heartily than the Negro men and women who had lined his route. These members of the audience could point with pride to the Lincoln Zouaves, a colored military unit from Baltimore, resplendent in their tasseled fezzes, baggy red pants, white leggings, and red-trimmed black jackets. Colored spectators sang along when musicians struck up 'Marching Through Georgia', the Civil War ditty celebrating General William Tecumseh Sherman's drive from Atlanta to the sea. Negro support for Grant was an expression of hope. The fervent belief that only Grant and his Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, could keep America's promise of equal rights for all men. Lincoln had been the first president to invite Negro participation in the inaugural pageant. Grant was the second. But for Grant, freedom and equal rights were matters of principle, not symbolism. More than even the most progressive-minded white Americans of his time, he rejected prejudice. He knew his soldiers had sacrificed not only to hold the nation together, but also to make men free. He did not want those sacrifices to have been in vain."

"It is enough to add that he was a very good General and a very bad President."

"The truly polite woman has no snub in her voice nor scorn upon her lips for those who occupy a lower social grade than herself. Nor will she thoughtlessly and carelessly shut the door of opportunity in the face of any one who is striving to rise in the scale of character, and build, over a sad past, more stately temples of thought and action. True politeness is consistent with perfect sincerity. If we are true to ourselves, we cannot be false to others. "I will tell this story,' said a person in the presence of General Grant, "as there are no ladies present." "But," replied the general, "there are gentlemen here." The man who could crush down defeat and organize victories had the manly politeness to guard the ears of others from being assaulted by unbecoming words."

"We must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon to find equally brillant results accomplished in the same space of time with such a small loss."

"But we will not always be in this condition. Wait until Dudy becomes president. I dreamed last night he had been elected president."

"It required no effort on his part to admit another man's superiority, and his admission that General Grant was right and he was wrong about operations in Vicksburg was not intended for effect as some suppose, but was perfectly in character."

"No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today."

"Before the Civil War Grant had participated in the plunder of Mexico; after it he was a protectionist president: all part of the same process of national affirmation."

"Grant the general had many qualities but he had a thing that's very necessary for a great general. He had what they call "four o'clock in the morning courage." You could wake him up at four o'clock in the morning and tell him they had just turned his right flank and he would be as cool as a cucumber. Grant, after that first night in the Wilderness, went to his tent, broke down, and cried very hard. Some of the staff members said they'd never seen a man so unstrung. Well, he didn't cry until the battle was over, and he wasn't crying when it began again the next day. It just shows you the tension that he lived with without letting it affect him... Grant, he's wonderful.""

"Grant's famous motto, "Let us have peace", adorns the entrance to his tomb in New York City. Brands rightly emphasizes that this was a call not simply for national reconciliation but also for consolidation of what had been won in the war. Union and emancipation. By the time Grant died, the first was secure. It took a long time for the nation to try once again to fulfill the promise of the second."

"There is one West Pointer, I think in Missouri, little known, and whom I hope the Northern people will not find out. I mean Sam Grant. I knew him well at the Academy and in Mexico. I should fear him more than any of their officers I have yet heard of. He is not a man of genius, but he is clear-headed, quick, and daring."