Civil War Quotes - Page 39

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

  David McCullough

  War, History, Would Be

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

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Blood, History

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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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• Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us an is.

  Shelby Foote

  War, History, United States

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• A radiant fellowship of the fallen.

  Joshua Chamberlain

  War, History, Fellowship

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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 was always a friend of southern rights, but an enemy of southern wrongs.

  Benjamin Butler

  War, Rights, History

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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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• 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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• The authors of all our misfortune.

  Jefferson Davis

  War, History, Misfortunes

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• It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.

  Henry Adams

  War, Fighting, Army

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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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• Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  War, History, Sitting

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• Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  War, Believe, History

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• Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  War, Writing, Heart

  Mary Boykin Chesnut (2011). “Mary Chesnut's Diary”, p.215, Penguin

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• We are scattered, stunned; the remnant of heart left alive is filled with brotherly hate... Whose fault? Everybody blamed somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  Hate, War, Hero

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• Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

  Walt Whitman

  War, Blood, History

  Walt Whitman (1995). “Specimen Days: & Collect”, p.314, Courier Corporation

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• One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

  Henry Adams

  War, Years, History

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.57, Harvard University Press

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• The pageant has passed. That day is over. But we linger, loath to think we shall see them no more together - these men, these horses, these colors afield.

  Joshua Chamberlain

  Horse, War, Men

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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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• War is an option of difficulties.

  James Wolfe

  War, History, Difficulty

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• I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, War, Lying

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• We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate politely, and not have a horrid fight for divorce.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  War, Divorce, Fighting

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• A friend of mine once said that there were only two truly national events in the history of the United States. One was the Civil War and the other one was the Depression.

  Arthur Miller

  War, Two, United States

  Interview with William R. Ferris, www.neh.gov. March/April 2001.

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