Civil war

“ A civil war breaks the bands of society and government, or at least suspends their force and effect; it produces in the nation two independent parties, which consider each other as enemies, and acknowledge no common judge. ”

“ Many persons deprecate our plan, for fear of a civil war; and terrific ideas of rivers of blood rolling across our fields, and piles of bones heaped on our shores, startle them in their slumbers, as the rustling of a leaf fills the slaveholder's heart with fear. In the first place, how very absurd is this idea of a civil war being the result of disunion. Can any one seriously urge it, as an objection to this movement? Look at the vast extent of territory open to the incursions of an enemy, if the North should withdraw from the South. ”

“ But long before the tocsin of civil war had sounded there were mutterings of thunder in the halls of Congress, and the cloud, at first no bigger than a man's hand, was yearly gathering force, till it finally burst in a cyclone of passion and prejudice and tyranny, and swept all before it in one besom of destruction. ”

“ The institution has in all ages been clung to with the tenacity of death; clung to until it sapped and destroyed the foundations of society; clung to until all law became violence; clung to until virtue was a thing only of history; clung to until industry folded its arms—until commerce reefed every sail—until the fields were desolate and the cities silent, except where the poor free asked for bread, and the slave for mercy; clung to until the slave forging the sword of civil war from his fetters drenched the land in the master's blood. Civil war has been the great liberator of the world. ”

“ A war between men of the same race, who had lived for three-quarters of a century under the same government, regarded themselves as one nation, and spoke the same language, is essentially a civil war. ”

“ An idea seemed to be entertained that all that was necessary to constitute a war was organized hostility in the district of country in a state of rebellion — that conflicts on land and on sea — the taking of towns and capture of fleets — in fine, the magnitude and dimensions of the resistance against the Government — constituted war with all the belligerent rights belonging to civil war. ”

“ In writing a history of the Civil War which is now raging in the land—the most gigantic and stupendous rebellion yet known to the world—the magnitude of the task, and the difficulties that present themselves, challenge a degree of moral courage almost equal to that physical bravery which has been so conspicuous in the war. ”

“ When I see this country in danger of being plunged into all the countless miseries of civil war—a war, in which, whatever be the blue, the blood of its best inhabitants mull probably flow, I cannot help pausing a while, and seriously asking this important question—Who are the parties in this ruinous contest, and what is the source of their quarrel? ”

“ Have not the providential developments of the rebellion revealed a new goal in our national progress? Instead of being a dire calamity, may we not rather consider the present civil war as a means, in the hand of Divine Providence, for the solution of a great moral problem—the overthrow of slavery? ”

“ In this death-struggle to test the vital question, whether the majority shall rule, let there be no holding back of money or men. Dear as war may be, a dishonorable peace will prove much dearer. Great as may be the sufferings of the camp and the battle-field, yet the prolonged tortures of a murdered Union, a violated Constitution, and Secession rampant over the country, will be found to be greater. My third reflection is, that the main cause of our civil war is slavery. ”

“ I did not believe that even civil war was to produce results in America different from what it produced elsewhere. Men would fight in a republic as they fought in monarchies, until they were tired, and an arrangement would follow. It was not common for a people of the same origin, of similar habits, and contiguous territory, to dismember an empire by civil war, unless violence had been used in bringing them together, or conquest had first opened the way to disunion. ”

“ The civil war rudely shook us up from that youthful dream of security and easy greatness which had formerly filled the popular mind. It placed us face to face with a terrible national danger and blessed us with moments of a keen consciousness of our imperfections. ”

“ In this whirlpool of political turmoil rebellion had time to grow and thrive in its southern strongholds, for its imminence could not be forced upon the cool consideration of a people whose traditions had so long been those of prosperous peace. The idea of a civil war, in which thousands on thousands of brave Americans would redden the soil but just denuded of its primeval timber, was an idea so horrible that the most iron-hearted man failed to recognize it as a possibility. ”

“ The Civil War, with its storm of passion, banished from our minds the great men and gigantic struggles of the preceding decade. We turned with scornful impatience from the pitiful and abortive compromises of those times, the puerile attempts to cure by futile plasters the cancer that was eating the vitals of the nation. ”

“ Where can be found the record of a civil war where the people, descended from a common stock and bound together by a common interest, sprang with such alacrity to the call to arms, and waged a war so relentless and cruel even in its very commencement, except there had been radical antagonisms existing through a long series of years? ”

“ The most thoughtless saw that a furious civil war would infallibly occur, unless some plan could be devised for adverting so terrible a calamity; and men, high in power, of all parties, and themselves secretly inclining either to Baliol, or Bruce, or Hastings, resolved, if possible, to lay aside their mutual differences, and to agree upon some measure for preserving the public peace. ”

“ The Civil War put their pretensions of patriotism to the test. If ever a war took place in which Government and people had to strain every nerve and resource to carry on a great conflict it was the Civil War. The result of that war was only to exchange chattel slavery for the more extensive system of economic slavery. ”

“ Every sensible man knows that the civil war is over, and that the exigencies of a great public danger which brought forth the necessity of exceptional measures for the salvation of the Republic and the protection of the loyal people, have ceased to exist. ”

“ These conflicting capabilities, with their attendant dangers, lurked in the body of our political organization from the very beginning. They were born with it; they grew with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, until the fatal hour when rebellion undertook the wicked work of its destruction. Whatever may be the actual issue of the struggle—whether the attempted dismemberment shall prove a success or a disastrous failure—the effect of the civil war on the character of our institutions must be commensurate with the organic character of the causes out of which it arose. ”

“ For we often lamented, between ourselves, the misfortunes which hung over the State, when we discovered the seeds of a civil war in the insatiable ambition of a few private Citizens, and saw every hope of an accommodation excluded by the rashness and precipitancy of our public counsels. ”

“ The political history of a nation, when it merges into armed strife, is generally a record of prejudices and of passion: civil war is the result. In this work the author deals not with causes, but with the terrible events that spring out of them ”

“ To avoid the danger of what men who have seized upon forts, arsenals, and other property of the United States, and continue to hold them by military force, may choose to call civil war, we are allowing a state of things to gather head which will make real civil war the occupation of the whole country for years to come, and establish it as a permanent institution. ”

“ So revolt followed cruelty and oppression. Great excesses were committed by both parties, and most horrible barbarities were exhibited. The atrocious nature of civil war is ever the same, and presents nearly the same undeviating picture of misery and crime. ”

“ Civil war is war between two or more portions of a country or state, each contending for the mastery of the whole, and each claiming to be the legitimate government. The term is also sometimes applied to war of rebellion, when the rebellious provinces or portions of the state are contiguous to those containing the seat of government. ”

“ They disclaim every idea of imbruing their bands in the blood of their fellow-citizens, or entering into a civil war among themselves, at all times; but more especially at so critical a period as the present, conceiving such a step to be highly impolitic and dangerous. ”

“ I expected to have seen some justification of arming one part of the society against another; of declaring a civil war the moment before the meeting of that body which has the sole right of declaring war; of being so patient of the kicks & scoffs of our enemies, & rising at a feather against our friends ”

“ From the instant that your Slave-holding States become the theatre of War—civil, servile, or foreign—from that instant, the War powers of Congress extend to interference with the Institution of Slavery in every Way by which it can be interfered with. ”

“ Very well, then when you have warfare things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war. ”

“ Moreover, the policy with which an administration charged with the duty of maintaining itself and preserving the Union shall conduct a civil war, must be confined always to the existing condition of political forces, and to the public sentiment of the whole country. ”

“ Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers. ”

“ Most of the people wanted to prevent another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppression and a Catholic King — yea, even Divine Right, — were preferable to a new struggle between members of the same race. ”

“ The great civil war has served necessarily as an extraordinary stimulus to historical writing and research concerning its antecedent causes, the tremendous conflict itself, and its far reaching and still potent consequences. ”

“ The state has become, as it were, the field of an endless civil war, which is developing always, even if it does not always show itself under the startling form of Marius and Sylla, days of June and wars of Secession. ”

“ In reality the class struggle in revolutionary times has always inevitably taken on the form of civil war, and civil war is unthinkable without the worst kind of destruction, without terror and limitations of form of democracy in the interests of the war. ”

“ The supreme trial of the Constitution came at last under the tremendous pressure of civil war. We ourselves are witnesses that the Union emerged from the blood and fire of that conflict purified and made stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good government. ”

“ Moreover, he clearly foresaw the absolute nature of a great civil war. Foreign wars may well, and often do, end in some sort of compromise, especially when the home life of the opponents can go on as before. ”

“ We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our country, that those who hate civil war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state.
It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation which breeds such notions and dispositions without some great alteration in the national character. ”

“ Civil war, at all times lamentable, appears peculiarly so when the cause of it lies in haughtiness and distrust. We have found however that, beneath the surface, there may have been elements of division and ill-will serious enough to require this painful remedy. ”

“ The soldiers are true to the flag and they will fight on and march on until the last rebel has fallen to the dust or laid down his arms. The soldiers are true, but the cause of the Union is in peril at home (voices—“That’s where it is”) , where secret organizations are mustering their forces and gathering in material of war for which there can be no possible use except to revolutionize this country through the fearful experience of civil war. ”

“ Here, then, were a handful of men repudiated by their king, cast off by their commercial partners, a prey to the consequences of civil war at home, and living by sufferance in the midst of a fierce and warlike people, compelled at last to work out their own political destiny. ”

“ These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign invader. ”