We talk of the irrepressible conflict and practically give the lie to our talk. We wage war against slave-holding rebels yet protect and augment the motive which has moved the slave holders to rebellion. We strike at the effect and leave the cause unharmed. Fire will not burn it out of us. Water cannot wash it out of us. That this war with the slaveholders can never be brought to a desirable termination until slavery – the guilt cause of all our national troubles – has been totally and for ever abolished. Frederick Douglass
We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree. Free forever. Frederick Douglass
The arm of the slaves is the best defence against the arm of the slaveholder. Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. I urge you to fly to arms and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave. This is our golden opportunity. Frederick Douglass, March 5th 1863
This war – disguise it they may – is virtually nothing more nor less than perpetual slavery against universal freedom. And to this end free states will have to come. Frederick Douglass
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous. Frederick Douglass
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglass
Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country. Ethan Allen
Yes here’s to the founding fathers – slave-owners, British citizens who didn’t want to pay taxes. Dave Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp
The blood of many thousands of our helpless, much injured fellow creatures is crying against us. John Newton
We ask you to consider that slavery is everywhere the inciting cause and sustaining base of treason. It seems to us the most obvious truth that whatever strengthens or fortifies slavery drives home the wedge intended to divide the Union. Horace Green, August 20th 1862, open letter to President
Did not Jesus condemn slavery? Let us examine some of his precepts. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Let every slaveholder apply these queries to his own heart; Am I willing to be a slave – Am I willing to see my wife the slave of another? – Am I willing to see my mother a slave, or my father, my sister or my brother? If not, then in holding others as slaves, I am doing what I would not wish to be done to me or any relative I have; and thus have I broken this golden rule which was given me to walk by. Angelina Grimke
Ordinary English labourers who simply wanted to earn a little land for themselves by the sweat of their brows ... This tale of two Americas ... I’m asking why the property-owning democracy developed in the north and not in the south. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? III Property, Channel 4 2011
It was a new world. But it was to be the West’s world. ibid.
Real estate plus representation: this is the American dream. ibid.
Hundreds of lavishly decorated churches were built. ibid.
Carolina seemed to be a bone yard of dead trees. ibid.
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina by John Locke ... Lock’s assumption that everyone here would own some land, even if it was as little as fifty acres. ibid.
White settlers displaced American Indians as owners of the land. ibid.
Liberation from Spain wasn’t quite the same as freedom in a North American sense. ibid.
Why did the new world need the ancient institution of slavery so badly? The answer had everything to do with manpower. ibid.
The legacy of segregation would endure for centuries. ibid.
Slavery and segregation were quite simply the original sin of the United States, giving a lie for two centuries to the American claim to be the zenith of civilisation. ibid.
If you persist, the Union will be dissolved. You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish. Thomas W Cobb
The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people are you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction … they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche. Samuel Houston, 1861
If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell. Philip Henry Sheridan
War means fighting, and fighting means killing. Nathan Bedford Forrest
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. William Tecumseh Sherman
You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth – right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. William Tecumseh Sherman, to Professor David F Boyd, cited Shelby Foote, The Civil War
If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there ... Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.
... A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence. William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to Major R M Sawyer 31st January 1864
I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting – its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. William Tecumseh Sherman, letter May 1865
We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war. William Tecumseh Sherman
My aim was to whip the rebels. To humble their pride, to follow them to the innermost recesses and to make them fear and dread us. War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it’ll be over. William Tecumseh Sherman
It is enough to make the whole world start at the awful amount of death and destruction that now stalks abroad. I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair. A kind of morning dash. And it may be well that we become hardened. The worst of the war is not yet begun. William Tecumseh Sherman
I think I understand the purpose of the South properly, and that the best way to deal with them is to meet them fair and square on any issue. We must fight them. Cut into them, not talk to them, and pursue till they cry, Enough! War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want. William Tecumseh Sherman
I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of. And I am willing to sacrifice everything but honour for its preservation. Robert E Lee
It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it. Robert E Lee
I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them. Robert E Lee