Union man

“ The great majesty of the Union had been insulted and set at defiance, and as one man, thousands upon thousands rushed around the worshipped banner of their country, firm in their patriotism, and terrible in their determination that it should never be trailed in the dust, or torn with hostile shot, unavenged. ”

“ I'm not a politician and my other habits air good. I've no enemys to reward, nor friends to sponge. But I'm a Union man. ”

“ Whatever endangers the perpetuity of this Union, demands the attention of every friend of his country; every man who is worthy the name of an American citizen. It calls loudly for prompt and effectual action, to avert the calamitous catastrophe. God save the Union, should be the prayer of every Christian. ”

“ Foreigners would suppose, from the declamation about union, that there was a great dislike in America to any general American government. I have never, in my whole life, heard one single man deny the necessity and propriety of the union. This necessity is deeply impressed on every American mind. There can be no danger of any object being lost when the mind of every man in the country is strongly attached to it. ”

“ Why, sir, from the year 1726 to the present time, the insult has not, I believe, been repeated, and probably never will again.
Sir, how honorable, how patriotic, was this course of conduct to the British opposition! How honorable and laudable would be its imitation here! Especially, sir, when union is all that is wanting to make us happy and victorious. Why then, sir, should we not have union, when it is so easy and efficacious a remedy for all our difficulties? Sir, the nation expects it; the nation has a right to demand it. ”

“ This rebellion and this war have cost too dear. The money spent, the vast stores destroyed, the tears shed, the lives sacrificed, the hearts broken, are too high a price to be paid for the mere name of Union. I never believed we had a Union. A true Union is based upon principles of mutual interest, of mutual respect and reciprocity, none of which ever existed between the North and South. They based their institutions on slavery; the North on freedom. ”

“ Don't tell me, Susan Ketler. Afraid? What of? Could the Union kill them for it? Could the men be hung, drawn and quartered for leaving it? Who is the Union? Giants that were born with thunderbolts and power from the Creator to control people's wills?--or just simple men like themselves: workmen too, once, some of 'em, if reports are true. You'd better not try to come over me with your fallacies. Facts is facts. If these men chose to do it, they could send the Trades' Union to the right about this very day, and return, with one accord, to work and their senses tomorrow. ”

“ A Union half free and half slave; a dual government, if not in fact, certainly in the brains and hearts of the people; two civilizations at eternal and inevitable war with each other; a Union with the canker-worm of slavery in it, impairing its strength every year and threatening its life; a Union in which two hostile ideas of political economy were at work, and where unpaid slave labor was inimical to the interests of the free workingmen. ”

“ It is ours, and not to slave in, but to master and to own,
While the Union makes us strong.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom, when we learn
That, the Union makes us strong.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand fold.
We can bring to birth the new world from the ashes of the old,
For the Union makes us strong. ”

“ The most distinguished men of the Union,—statesmen whose own names were historical, men of letters, merchants who remembered that the wealth of the counting-room and the wealth of statesmanship were indissolubly bound together, old planters, clever young men from Virginia and from nearly all the southern States, came to behold its meeting, to see its members, and to hear the debates; and, as if to invest the scene with a yet lovelier hue, beauty, brightened by intelligence and glowing with patriotism, shed its softened light over that imposing spectacle. ”

“ I have always lived in the Union; I have always loved the old Union, and I love her still; I have always voted for the old Union; and, stranger, when I die, whether I go to heaven or hell, I shall stick by the old Union! ”

“ From the moment that independence was secured no man in America saw more clearly the necessity of national union, or defined more wisely and distinctly the reasons for it. He is the chief illustration in a popular government of a great leader who was not also a great orator. Perhaps that fact gave a solid force to his influence by depriving all his expressions of a rhetorical character, and preserving in them throughout a simplicity and moderation which deepened the impression of his comprehensive sagacity. ”

“ The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, also offer you a Union—a Union based upon deception unscrupulously practiced, upon great promises treacherously violated, upon the National faith scandalously broken; a Union whose entrails are once more to be lacerated by the irrepressible struggle between slavery and liberty ”

“ We have regarded the Union as the culmination of a long series of endeavors, so to call them, on the part of Providence, to bring men from a social condition characterized by the multiplicity, diversity, separation, antagonism, and hostility of independent, warring, petty states, into that larger, higher form of political and social life, that shall combine in itself the three conditions of unity—variety in unity, and of the utmost liberty with order—as the soul and life of the political body. ”

“ I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. ”

“ We are as devoted to the Union as any portion of the American people (I use the phrase as meaning the people of the Union) ; but we see in a national consolidated government evils innumerable to us. Admit us to be a Nation and not an Union, and where would we stand? ”

“ It would make the Union a union in truth — a bond of mutual affection and brotherhood — and not a mere connection used by the stronger as the instrument of dominion and aggrandizement — and submitted to by the weaker only from the lingering remains of former attachment, and the fading hope of being able to restore the government to what it was originally intended to be, a blessing to all. ”

“ If, in order to maintain the Union, we must sacrifice all the great objects for which the Union was formed,—the establishment of justice, the promotion of the general welfare, and the securing of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,—then the Union no longer represents a beneficent divinity but a foul Dagon, and is worthy to be broken in pieces. ”

“ Some of them, indeed, made no profession of being Union men, and said they only called to indicate their entire disposition to submit, without opposition, to whatever the Government might do, and to pay their respects to the man whom they recognized as the ablest in our public life, and, by virtue of his management of the finances, their real conqueror. ”

“ That produces commerce, brings us together, and makes us better friends. We like one another the more for it. And I understand as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody else, that these mutual accommodations are the cements which bind together the different parts of this Union; that instead of being a thing to "divide the house,"—figuratively expressing the Union,—they tend to sustain it; they are the props of the house, tending always to hold it up.
But when I have admitted all this, I ask if there is any parallel between these things and this institution of slavery? ”

“ The destiny of this country is great and liberal, and is to be greatly administered. It is to be administered according to what is, and is to be, and not according to what is dead and gone. The union of this people is a real thing, an alliance of men of one flock, one language, one religion, one system of manners and ideas. I hold it to be a real and not a statute union. The people cleave to the Union, because they see their advantage in it, the added power of each. ”

“ The bonds that unite us as one People,—a substantial community of origin, language, belief and law; common, national and political interests ... these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious and transient. The heart of the People, North and South, is for the Union.... The weary masses of the people are yearning to see the dear old flag floating over their capitols, and they sigh for the return of peace, prosperity and happiness, which they enjoyed under a government whose power was felt only in its blessings.... ”

“ It has been consecrated by the blood of our fathers, by the glories of the past, and by the hopes of the future. The Union has already made us the most prosperous, and ere long will, if preserved, render us the most powerful, nation on the face of the earth. ”

“ The value of the Union is beyond computation, and no respect is due to those who will even dare to calculate its value. One of our ablest statesmen has wisely and eloquently said, "Who shall assign limits to the achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of this glorious Union? No treason to mankind since the organization of society would be equal in atrocity to that of him who would lift his hand to destroy it. lie would overthrow the noblest structure of human wisdom, which protects himself and his fellow man. ”

“ These were the times that tested the courage of our convictions, and the strength of our union. And despite all our divisions and disagreements, our hesitations and our fears, America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, as one people. ”

“ The problems before us may be different, but the key to solving them remains the same: it is the individual--the individual who steps forward. And the state of our Union is the union of each of us, one to the other: the sum of our friendships, marriages, families and communities. ”

“ These were the circumstances which made it apparent to Americans that the Federal Constitution had come not a day too soon, which welded the nation together like an armor-plate of steel against foes on every hand, and taught the need of union as it never could have been taught amid surroundings of prosperity and peace. ”

“ In this sense it is, that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
"These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? ”

“ The conquered banner's tattered folds hang on the wall her standard-bearer lies in the dust—the sod is green above the heads of her valiant leaders—her rank and file sleep in many an unknown grave. We are in the cooling valleys of peace, where refreshing lies, and above us waves the flag of the old, old Union our people once loved so well. ”

“ I appeal to you to join the union that truly represents you, the union that unites you, the union in which you can stand shoulder to shoulder, regardless of your occupation; the union in which you will move forward, step by step, marching to the inspiring music of the coming emancipation. ”

“ Nowhere so clearly and eloquently as in the pages of this great philosophical statesman can be read the rapid growth of that political movement that in twelve years captured every Free State, placed a President in the chair, and then, with a splendid generosity, invited the whole loyal people to unite in a party of the Union, knowing that henceforth the Union meant the people and liberty against the aristocracy and slavery. ”

“ Is not a noun, a word, a subtlety,
But is a status, substance, living temple
Reared from the bottom up on stones of fate,
Predestined. Yet the truth is only this:{131}
The Union is a noun and nothing more,
And stands for what? A federative thing
Formed of the wills of states, not otherwise.
Existing; and to kill to save the Union
Is but the exercise of a hue and cry,
An arbitrary passion, sophist’s dream.
And Robespierre, who killed for liberty,
And Cæsar, who destroyed the Roman liberties
To have his way, are of the quality
Of Lincoln, whom I know. ”

“ President, our fate is in our own hands; let us have union and we have nothing to fear. So highly do I prize union, at this awful moment, that I would prefer any one measure of resistance with union, to any other measure of resistance with division; let us then, sir, banish all personal feelings; let us present to our enemies the formidable front of an indissoluble band of brothers, nothing else is necessary to our success. ”

“ When the Union's inspiration
Through the Workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater
Anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker
Than the feeble strength of one?
But the Union makes us strong. ”