American Civil War Quotes - Page 4

• One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Powerful, War, Southern

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

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• The Almighty has His own purposes.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Civil War, Purpose

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

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

  John Mason Brown

  Blood, Land, Civil War

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

  Abraham Lincoln

  Organization, Civil War, Events

  Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr. 1864

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• My plans are perfect, and when I start to carry them out, may God have mercy on Bobby Lee, for I shall have none.

  Joseph Hooker

  War, Perfect, May

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• Quit thinking about what Bobby Lee's gonna do to us and start thinking about what we're going to do to him.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  War, Thinking, History

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• Our armies were in as much chaos in victory as theirs in defeat.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, Army, History

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• Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Mother, Children, War

  "Political speeches of Robert G. Ingersoll" by Robert Green Ingersoll, C. P. Farrell, (p. 341), 1914.

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• As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has.

  Shelby Foote

  Country, War, History

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• I'm a damned sight smarter than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  War, Sight, Organization

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• Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come.

  Bruce Catton

  War, History, Casualties

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• The authors of all our misfortune.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, History, Misfortunes

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• A radiant fellowship of the fallen.

  Joshua Chamberlain

  War, History, Fellowship

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• I always shoot at privates. It was they who did the shooting and killing, and if I could kill a wound a private, why, my chances were so much the better. I always looked upon officers as harmless personages.

  Sam Watkins

  War, History, Shooting

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• People here are quite struck aback at Sunday's news of the capture of New Orleans. It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it. The division of American had become an idea so fixed that they had about shut out all the avenues to the reception of any other.

  Henry Adams

  War, Believe, Sunday

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• I have never in my life taken a command into battle and had the slightest desire to come out alive unless I won.

  Philip Sheridan

  War, Taken, History

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• There's nothing anyone can do except change the subject.

  Philibert Orry

  War, History, Subjects

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• Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Boys, Simple

  Abraham Lincoln, Don Edward Fehrenbacher (1977). “Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings”, p.227, Stanford University Press

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• We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.

  Frederick Douglass

  War, Fall, History

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• It must now atone in blood for its complicity in wickedness.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Blood, History

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• It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.

  David McCullough

  War, History, Would Be

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• Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Civilization, History

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.443, Harvard University Press

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• Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

  Bruce Catton

  War, Moving, Greatness

  Bruce Catton, James M. McPherson (1960). “The Civil War”, p.275, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence.

  Bruce Catton

  War, Night, Men

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• The enduring realization that when a great challenge comes, the most ordinary people can show that they value something more than they value their own lives. When the last of the veterans had gone, and the sorrows and bitterness which the war created had at last worn away, this memory remained.

  Bruce Catton

  Memories, War, People

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