American Civil War Quotes - Page 3

• We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Patriotic, Civil War, Politics

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Civil War, Unity

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS

  Abraham Lincoln

  Dream, Nature, Memories

  Harold Holzer, Abraham Lincoln (1998). “The Lincoln Mailbag: America Writes to the President, 1861-1865”, p.7, SIU Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• War means fighting, and fighting means killing.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest

  Military, War, Mean

  "May I Quote You, General Forrest?". Book by Randall Bedwell, 1996.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

  Henry Adams

  War, Character, Men

  "American Heritage" Magazine, December 1955.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Believe, Civil War

  Abraham Lincoln, Terence Ball (2013). “Lincoln: Political Writings and Speeches”, p.121, Cambridge University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Government, Hands

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.261, Wildside Press LLC

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell.

  Philip Sheridan

  War, Texas, Hell

  34 Copy quote

• A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Believe, Fall, Government

  Speech at Republican state convention nominating him to run for U.S. senator, Springfield, Ill., 16 June 1858

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pressure is something you feel when you do not know what you are doing.

  Chuck Noll

  Basketball, Funny Inspirational, Funny Motivational

  100 Copy quote

• Grant stood by me when I was crazy.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Crazy, Grants

  Dwight Lancelot Clarke, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry Smith Turner (1969). “William Tecumseh Sherman: Gold Rush Banker”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing.

  Paul Stanley

  Funny Inspirational, Funny Motivational, Top Management

  75 Copy quote

• Know what you're talking about.

  George H. W. Bush

  Knowing Jesus, Talking, Scary

  George H.W. Bush (2013). “All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.

  Alexander H. Stephens

  War, Men, White Man

  Alexander H. Stephens' “Corner Stone” Speech, teachingamericanhistory.org. March 21, 1861.

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Motivational, Civil War, Charity

  Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1865

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Life, Friendship, Memories

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1861

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Hands, Issues

  Abraham Lincoln (2011). “Lincoln on the Civil War: Selected Speeches”, p.44, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Prayer, War, Men

  Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1865

  7 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.

  John Brown

  War, Thinking, Blood

  John Brown (1910). “The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia”

  130 Copy quote

  Show source

• With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Business, Work

  Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1865

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  4th Of July, Patriotic, America

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you don't know what you're doing, fake it.

  Jill Shalvis

  Funny Inspirational, Funny Motivational, Top Management

  66 Copy quote

• It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.

  Robert E. Lee

  Memorial Day, Peace, War

  Attributed; after the battle of Fredericksburg, December 1862

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Thinking, Europe, People

  Said to David F. Boyd at the Louisiana State Seminary on December 24, 1860. "The Civil War: A Book of Quotations" by Robert Blaisdell, 2004.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Party, Duration

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

  8 Copy quote

  Show source