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Civil War Quotes

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Civil War Quotes

“Sometimes the smoke from the factories and riverboats and trains would obscure the night sky entirely. But the town's industrial breath was blowing somewhere else tonight, and so the Armstrong house was bathed in starlight. Nell studied the little white specks, like glittering dust on black velvet, and she asked, "You boys ever wonder what it'd be like to be somewhere else?”

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Book:Hardtack: A Civil War Story
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“Of the 52 Confederate generals who had crossed the Potomac in the past three weeks, no less than 17 — barely under one third — had become casualties in the past three days. Five were killed outright or mortally wounded... When the lost was lengthened by 18 colonels either killed or captured, many of them officers of high promise, slated for early promotion, it was obvious that the Army of Northern Virginia had suffered a loss in leadership from which it might never recover. A British observer was of this opinion. He lauded the offensive prowess of Lee's soldiers, who had marched out as proudly as if on parade in their eagerness to come to grips with their opponents on the ridge across the way; "But they will never do it again," he predicted. And he told why. He had been with the army since Fredericksburg, ticking off the illustrious dead from Stonewall Jackson down, and now on the heels of Gettysburg he asked a rhetorical question of his Confederate friends: "Don't you see your system feeds upon itself? You cannot fill the places of these men. Your troops do wonders, but every time at a cost you cannot afford." (pp. 577-578).”

Civil WarAttrition
Book:The Civil War, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian
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“The ever-present war in the background lent a pleasant informality to social relations, an informality which older people viewed with alarm. Mothers found strange men calling on their daughters, men who came without letters of introduction and whose antecedents were unknown. To their horror, mothers found their daughters holding hands with these men. Mrs. Merriwether, who had never kissed her husband until after the wedding ceremony, could scarcely believe her eyes when she caught Maybelle kissing the little Zouave, Rene Picard, and her consternation was even greater when Maybelle refused to be ashamed. Even the fact that Rene immediately asked for her hand did not improve matters. Mrs. Merriwether felt that the South was heading for a complete moral collapse and frequently said so. Other mothers concurred heartily with her and blamed it on the war. But men who expected to die within a week or a month could not wait a year before they begged to call a girl by her first name, with "Miss," of course, preceding it. Nor would they go through the formal and protracted courtships which good manners had prescribed before the war. They were likely to propose in three or four months. And girls who knew very well that a lady always refused a gentlemen the first three times he proposed rushed headlong to accept the first time.”

Civil WarAntebellumSouthern CultureSouthern Morality
Book:Gone with the wind
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“Every civil war builds on illusions and fear Even war between individuals; whatever bonds may exist between them To recapitulate images from history: After the first world war, exhaustion, victory, inability to build a new order, growing dissolution, chaos Revanchism Economic depression Then the waiting for Germany, the generalized war initiated by Germany This dread waiting, 1938, 1939 When I was conceived After the cold war another period of exhaustion, another victory Perhaps we are in the presence of generalized civil war, internal division, hatred Should we prefer the empire? As Dante did? Or Ezra Pound, Heidegger Or for that matter Brecht? We love dissolution and chaos passionately, I hear a voice say, I know whose It is not here that I shall say it It is not easy There are no nations Pillars of fire precede the returning, in human terms, lost son.”

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Book:Mozart's Third Brain
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“Would you like some laudanum?” she said directly. “No,” he answered through clenched teeth. “You make me feel very guilty for getting Mrs. Dodge to stop giving it to you,” Arabella confessed. “I’ve seen what can happen to a man who uses such things too freely,” John said resolutely. “There was a man in our town–” he broke off, stifling a groan. “It doesn’t matter - I don’t want the stuff, that’s all.”

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Book:The Letter
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“There can be no discredit to a conquered people for accepting the conditions offered by their conquerors. Nor is there any occasion for a feeling of humiliation. We have made an honest, and I hope that I may say, a creditable fight, but we have lost. Let us come forward, then, and accept the ends involved in the struggle....Let us accept the terms, as we are in duty bound to do. -- JAMES LONGSTREET, Letter to New Orleans Times, March 18, 1867.”

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Book:Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South
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“In the sixteenth century the unity of western European Christendom had been shattered by the rise of Protestantism in its various strands (Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican). While the state was regarded as part of the body of Christ, the concept of sharing a political community with those of differing doctrinal commitments was unthinkable. And so it remained at first. Protestant reformers and their Catholic adversaries all insisted that one of the main aims of government was to maintain "true religion." They disagreed, of course. as to which brand of Christianity was true. Thus European history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became a chronicle of civil war, of massacre, and of the expulsion of religious minorities. The notion of religious toleration grew less out of any particular brand of Christianity than out of the fear and frustration of protracted civil war. (p. 24)”

Civil WarTrue ReligionReligious Toleration
Book:The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought
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“Historically, on average international wars have lasted only six months. In contrast, the average civil war has been much longer, with estimates ranging from seven to fifteen years. If a family are going to be refugees for over a decade, their priority is not emergency food and shelter. It is to re-establish the threads of normal famiy life, anchored materially by a capacity of whoever is the breadwinner to earn a living. The camps run by UNHCR met the basic material needs of refugees, but they provided few opportunities to earn a living. Consequently, they left families bereft of autonomy.”

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Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“Human kneels to no ICE or SS (Sonnet 2200) Human bows to no flag or crown, human claims no jeweled throne - rejoicing in ruin of reputation, human stands unbent and alone. Bound to no creed or clan, human kneels before no stone - every place where hate looms, human sings in flesh and bone. Human kneels to no ICE or SS, human fears no dictatorial decree - where chains are sold as holy relic, human comes alive, roaring to be free. Human walks not in luxury suits, but in dusty rags of the street - human feasts with homeless folks, and dies happy at their feet.”

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Book:The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology
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“We are woken gently at three in the morning and told that we need to leave. Guided by the light of the stars rather than the moon, we walk for half an hour before we reach a hut. We can just about make out the presence of three men inside, but it's almost as dark as the balaclavas that hide their faces. In the identikit released by the Mexican government, Marcos was de-scribed as a professor with a degree in philosophy who wrote a thesis on Althusser and did a Master's at Paris-Sorbonne Univer-sity. A voice initially speaking French breaks the silence: “We’ve got twenty minutes. I prefer to speak Spanish if that’s OK. I’m Subcomandante Marcos.”

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Book:Interviste del Secolo Breve
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“Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States - a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn't have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.”

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Book:The Midnight House
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“White Slaves: Chapter Three of “The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue” There were two distinctly different ways of looking at white mulattoes–socially and physiologically. Socially, a white partus slave looked as white as any white person but was considered a black person because he or she had “one drop” of black blood from a distant black female ancestor who was a slave. Such was the case when Mr. C. was told, “That’s not a white girl; she is a nigger, sir.” Physiologically speaking, however, white partus slaves were white people because all traits of their remote black ancestry had disappeared. The North saw these white slaves as whites. The South saw these white slaves as blacks. An 1857 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune commented on racial classification in the South. “The southern census takers, it is notorious, returned all persons as blacks who, were not more than half white. Those who possessed straight hair and Anglo-Saxon features they set down as mulattoes, many of whom were as white-skinned as their owners.” The actual number of white mulatto slaves is unknowable because all shades from “one drop” to those showing some discernible degree of black admixture were classed together as mulattoes without any distinction as to color.”

Civil WarSlavery In The United States
Author:Lawrence R. Tenzer
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“War cannot eliminate differing ideas and viewpoints, and partisans of the defeated side do not disappear. Though subjugated, they become a sizable political constituency in the postwar period. A dictator may be able to repress them, and in democracies a numerical majority may outvote them, but neither can change their thoughts. Since civil wars are, by nature, deep and fundamental conflicts, the competition between the views that led to war is likely to resurface. The defeated side may be chastened or subdued, but its values and ways of seeing the world reappear, in some form, in politics [107].”

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Book:Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States
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“While recruiting, Lieutenant Grace was often insulted by such remarks as, "There goes the captain of the Negro Company! He thinks the negroes will fight! They will turn and run at the first sight of the enemy!" His little son was scoffed at in school because his father was raising a negro company to fight the white men.”

Civil WarBlack HistoryRace RelationsPhiladelphiaUs HistoryRace And Racism In AmericaRecruitmentInfantry
Book:History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865
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“Nationalism among nations is like racism among races. Racism and nationalism are forms of tribalism. Tribalism always, always leads to war. Why? Because every nation thinks they're superior to other nations, and their own self-interest is more important than the self-interest of other nations.”

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Book:American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America
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“JAKE BAKER JOINING THE UNION ARMY IN NEW ORLEANS "I'd prefer to be back in Texas, taking aim at the Rebs..., but I just can't do that," said Jake. ..."So, I'll just do what I can do, I guess." "I suspect that goes for all of us," said the Colonel. "Maybe we should make that the unit's motto. 'The First Texas Cavalry of the United States of America: We'll just do what we can do, we guess.' It does have a ring to it, but I expect that we need somethin' a bit more inspirational and less true.”

Civil WarHistorical FictionWar Fiction
Book:The Sharpshooter 1862-1864
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“1920… Chaos. A chaos brewed from fear, lawlessness, constant changes of power, civil war, and disease. The Red Commissars with their grain requisitions. The White Guards with arrogant imperial plunder. Makhno’s forces with anarchist expropriations and the division of everything and everyone. The gangs of Hryhoriev, Marusia, and countless others… Each with its own rules. Yet all of them take and kill, rape and rob. In Tomakivka, only one institution functioned reliably – the hospital. It was needed by every warring authority, every general and ataman: the wounded had to be treated, the sick healed, and the able-bodied fed and given shelter. — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One Context note: Set in Ukraine during the Civil War (1917–1921), at the time of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, when multiple armed forces – Red, White, anarchist, and local warlord groups — fought for control, leaving civilians trapped in a landscape of violence, lawlessness, and disease.”

HistoryViolenceRevolutionCivil WarHistorical FictionWorld War IUkraineEastern EuropeHuman TragedyUkrainian Literature
Author:Володимир Шабля
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“Nya nodded. "So many people come here without an understanding of the primary cause of the Civil War. Some people think Jefferson wrote the Constitution. I mean there are just so many ways that our public education is failing people by just not giving them the context to understand that Monticello is a plantation, and that slavery was a system that created the economic prosperity that enabled our country to exist. That is not something most people understand. I don't really blame them, because they're not taught to engage that history, and most people are not out here reading all these books that are piled on my desk.”

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Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“Planters clung to their proslavery beliefs even when there were facts to the contrary because the stakes involved in abandoning them were too high. They could not reject or even compromise their central myths, for to do so would mean condemning a whole culture as a lie...Ideologies, once constructed, have lives of their own. Any evidence which might have contradicted the planters' basic beliefs faced an a priori denial.”

SlaveryAfrican AmericanCivil WarU S History
Book:Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction
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“When The Nation Regresses (Sonnet 2210) Letter to the rest of the world - for the first time in over 200 years, US is proudly regressing to its primitive origins, now is the time to take stock of your strengths within - your domestic brains, your domestic backbones, and wield, empower and apply them most vehemently - now is the time you fly higher than ever, without sam, because big brother has turned into a drunken uncle. And to those living within these shores of liberty, who still have their sanity intact, I say - you might not have had the honor to fight nazis, but now is the time you resist with your life. It's not a free country, it's a free jungle, where predators roam free abusing the marginalized. If you don't stand up now on the right side of life, not human, not alive, you are undead - uncivilized.”

AmericaHuman RightsCivil WarFascismNaziWhite SupremacyAuthoritarianismNeonaziChristian NationalismFascist
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit.”

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Book:The Book of Not
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“منذ بدء «الحملة الإيمانية» في عام 1993، تغير الحزب والمجتمع تغيرا كبيرا، وتغير معهما المخيال الشتي. جاء التحول مفاجئا للجميع: في اجتماع لقيادة الحزب، تساءل الزعيم عن طبيعة «حزب البعث»: أهو علماني أم إيماني؟ وأجاب بأنه اختار أن يكون إيمانيا. وكان هذا الانقلاب الأيديولوجي ناجما عن الهزيمة والانهيار الناتجين من حرب الكويت، وإعلان إفلاس أيديولوجي. ستنطوي الحملة الإيمانية على خليط من التربية الدينية، وتحديد أشكال السلوك واللباس، وقائمة قاسية من مدونة عقاب جديدة. في فترة قصيرة، تحجب قادة اتحاد المرأة الرسمي، ثم عضوات الحزب، وعضوات منظمات الطلاب والشباب، وانتهى الأمر بتصميم حجاب خاص لهدی صالح مهدي عماش، عضوة القيادة القطرية في حزب البعث»، وكذا للنساء في جیش القدس» الذي شكل لاحقا. صدرت قرارات متلاحقة لتعميم «الأسلمة»: تنظيم دورات دينية للحزبين، ثم لعموم الطلاب إلزام الطلاب والحزبين بحضور دروس دينية كانت تقام في الجوامع يوميا، وتحت إشراف «حزب البعث» ومسؤوليته عن الحضور والمناقشة والالتزام. واستمر هذا عشر سنوات. صدرت مدونة عقوبات جديدة: قرارات بقطع يد السارق، نفذت في أكثر من مكان؛ و قرار بإلقاء ثلاثة من «فدائيي صدام» من سطح بناية عالية في البصرة، بتهمة اللواط؛ وصدر قرار بسجن البعثي ثلاث سنوات إذا بط وهو يلعب القمار؛ وأعلن - أكثر من مرة - عن قطع رؤوس نساء بالسيف، بتهمة الدعارة (وهي أمور اتبعتها «القاعدة» و«داعش»، اعتمادا على الكتب نفسها التي درسها القادة الحزبيون في «الحملة الإيمانية»)؛ إضافة إلى كثير من الإجراءات الحزبية والقانونية، ومنها قرار بإطلاق سراح السجين المحكوم عليه في قضية جنائية إذا حفظ جزءا من القرآن أو أكثر من جزء، أو حتى القرآن كله، بحسب مدة حكمه، وبغض النظر عن جريمته، واعتبر القرار أن حفظ ذلك المقدار من الآيات هو بمنزلة توبة مقبولة.”

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Book:دولة الخلافة : التقدم إلى الماضي ، داعش والمجتمع المحلي في العراق
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“I have dealt with killahs before." I study her face. She is not speaking figuratively. Her dark eyes hold mine. "I told you where I came from." I do some quick math. In the 90's, around the time my world was shattered by my father's death, Sierra Leone was brutalized by civil war. Mariama would have been a young adult, watching everything around her being blown to pieces. I learned it as a fact in a college classroom. Mariama lived it. How little thought I've given to the life of this woman I've come to depend on.”

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Book:The Marsh Queen
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“With the number of accusations of harassment and assault leveled at Washington College men, Lee used a light disciplinary touch around racial intimidation, attacks, and sexual violence, even though he was known for a heavy hand in less serious incidents. Lee did not consider African Americans worthy of protection.”

SlaveryCivil WarWhite SupremacyUs HistoryRacial Violence
Book:Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
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“Guards punished anyone caught taking bones from the garbage by fastening the bone between his teeth, across his mouth, and then tying like a gag. "And then the poor fellow was made to fall down and crawl around on his hands and knees like a dog, a laughing stock for Federal soldiers, spies, and camp followers," Bean recalled bitterly.”

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Book:To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65
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