Quotes & Sayings About Civil War Abraham Lincoln

I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may. — Abraham Lincoln

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln

New Rule: If you married a manic-depressive, three of your children died, and while you were president civil war broke out and someone shot you in the head, your coin really shouldn't say, In God We Trust. — Bill Maher

Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel that you are, and as inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or holy: turn us loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we can do.

--thomas havens — George Saunders

I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype. — Steven Spielberg

The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid. — Abraham Lincoln

If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it. — Abraham Lincoln

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid. — Leonard Leventon

Finally, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as Thanksgiving: a day to solemnly acknowledge the sacrifices made for the Union ... Shopping was part of the American Dream, too. So in 1939, at the urging of merchants, FDR moved Thanksgiving ahead a week, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. And there it has remained, a day of national gluttony, retail pageantry, TV football, and remembrance of the Pilgrims, a folk so austere that they regarded Christmas as a corrupt Papist holiday. — Tony Horwitz

The war, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. — Abraham Lincoln

Let us strive on to finish the work we are in. — Abraham Lincoln

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. — Abraham Lincoln

Care for him who shall have borne the battle — Abraham Lincoln

In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it. — Abraham Lincoln

As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you. — Abraham Lincoln

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. — Abraham Lincoln

I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war. — Abraham Lincoln

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

With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. — Abraham Lincoln

In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party. — Abraham Lincoln

You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike. — Abraham Lincoln

The Lord spared the fitten and the rest he seen fitten to die. — Abraham Lincoln

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

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

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds. — Abraham Lincoln

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. — Abraham Lincoln

I can make brigadier generals, but i can't make horses. — Abraham Lincoln

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. — Abraham Lincoln

It was said by Abraham Lincoln that Ms. Stowe's novel, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, started the great civil war, the it can be said with certainty that Ms. Brown's novel THE SOUTHERN CROSS reveals the untold story behind the Civil Rights Movement." John Jeter — Alabama Jane Brown

During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals! — Abraham Lincoln

Why did John Wilkes Booth do it? In My Thoughts Be Bloody young historian Nora Titone is one of the few to have genuinely explored this question. In doing so, she has crafted a fascinating psychological drama about one of the central events of the Civil War: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This book promises to stimulate lively historical debate, and will be a treat for every Civil War buff who always pondered that haunting question, "what made him pull that trigger?" Bravo on a marvelous achievement. — Jay Winik

Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself.

Well, the rabble could. The rabble would.

He would lead the rabble in managing.

The thing would be won. — George Saunders

I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. — Ernest Hemingway,

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

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

The Almighty has His own purposes. — Abraham Lincoln

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. — Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men. — Theodore Roosevelt

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. — Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln replied:"There is a difference between secession against the Constitution and in favor of the Constitution. — Clint Johnson

I failed, I failed, and that is about all that can be said about it. — Abraham Lincoln

Bring me Longstreet's head on a platter and the war will be over — Abraham Lincoln

The better angels of our nature — Abraham Lincoln

My God! My God! What will the country say? — Abraham Lincoln

Offering thanks in the midst of tragedy is an American tradition, . even during a bloody Civil War. — Abraham Lincoln

Every man has a right to be equal with every other man. — Abraham Lincoln

He has got the slows, Mr. Blair. — Abraham Lincoln

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, was put into effect on January 1, 1863, but news of the Proclamation and enforcement did not reach Texas until after the end of the Civil War almost two years later. — Corrine Brown

Abraham Lincoln went through 12 generals before he got Ulysses S. Grant. He had never done a Civil War before. — Marianne Williamson

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. — Abraham Lincoln

The trouble with Hooker is that he's got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be. — Abraham Lincoln

Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln was the most important man to ever occupy the White House because he abolished slavery and kept the states united through a bloody civil war. — Kitty Kelley

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. — David Letterman

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War. — Douglas Brinkley

I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. — Abraham Lincoln