Civil War Confederate Quotes & Sayings

As late as 1920, some 244,000 Civil War veterans were still living, several of whom were in Congress, while Union hero Oliver Wendell Holmes sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. As D. W. Brogan, an astute observer of national trends, would write: "The impact of the Civil War on American life and American memory can hardly be exaggerated. It is still 'the war.'" Brogan expressed this opinion in 1944 - during World War II. Not until the last Union and Confederate veterans died out in the 1940s would the national memory be truly rid of the Civil War. — Douglas Brinkley

I think the ties to slavery and the terrible tragedy that followed the Civil War with Jim Crow and racial violence is closely linked to the Confederate flag. — William R. Ferris

When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage. — Natasha Trethewey

We can only imagine the history of the free world today if, at the end of the Civil War, there had been two countries: the United States and the Confederate States of America. — Douglas Brinkley

When you come to Montgomery, you see fifty-nine monuments and memorials, all about the Civil War, all about Confederate leaders and generals. We have lionized these people, and we have romanticized their courage and their commitment and their tenacity, and we have completely eliminated the reality that created the Civil War. — Bryan Stevenson

While the framers of the United States Constitution were ashamed of slavery and used euphemisms in place of the term "slave", the authors of the Confederate Constitution proudly used the term no less than ten times. — C.L. Gammon

For almost one hundred years, leaders of the white South managed to freeze race relations and racial ideology in something close to the Confederate pattern, thus demonstrating that the passage of time by itself does not erase a conflicted past. Elite southern men and women created an ideology of the Lost Cause that wrapped antebellum society, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, and postwar racism in the mantle of a protective, laudatory myth. The Lost Cause portrayed the white South as cultured, chivalrous, and superior while making the North into the aggressor - crude, unprincipled, and vindictive.

[...] Even after 1900 the Lost Cause ideology continued to gain strength under the leadership of a new generation, until most southern whites came to believe that their history and the myth were identical [75 - 76]. — Paul D. Escott

I know the GOP is called the stupid party, but the idea that Republicans can have the Confederate flag hung around their neck is ridiculous! It's a Democrat flag! The flags - states that seceded during the Civil War were all Democrat states. That's their flag. The slave states were Democrat states! The racist states until the 1960s were Democrat states! — Sean Hannity

Mitchell rose to the task of playing the avenging angel for the Confederate States. There have been hundreds of novels about the Civil War, but Gone With the Wind stands like an obelisk in the — Margaret Mitchell

The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing. — John Niven

An apocryphal story recounts the dilhemma of a man during the Civil War who could not decide whether to join the Confederate or Union forces. Finally he put on a gray coat and blue pants, and both sides shot him. — John Frohnmayer

Unusual financial activity: none, unless you count the fact that someone in the family is way too into Civil War biographies. (Can this be a possible indication of Confederate insurgents still living and working in Virginia? Must research further.) — Ally Carter

Imagine you're alive at the end of the Civil War. You're living in the South, but you're a Northerner. You plan to move home as soon as the war's over. While in the South you've accumulated lots of Confederate currency. Now, suppose you know for a fact the North's going to win the war, and the end is imminent. What will you do with your Confederate money? If you're smart, there's only one answer. You should immediately cash in your Confederate currency for U. S. currency - the only money that will have value once the war's over. Keep only enough Confederate currency to meet your short-term needs. Kingdom currency, backed by the eternal treasury, is the only medium of exchange recognized by the Son of God, whose government will last forever. The currency of his kingdom is our present faithful service and sacrificial use of our resources for him. The payoff in eternity will be what Paul called 'a firm foundation' consisting of treasures beyond our wildest dreams. — Randy Alcorn

A Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service, said: "I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."34 — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Jesse and Frank James were the most well-known military-trained gang members — Carter F. Smith

My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South. — Greg Iles

The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hardbitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War. — Winston S. Churchill

Signs for the reenactment adorned every corner, each one a line drawing of a Civil War soldier superimposed over the Confederate battle flag. The signs promised THRILLING HISTORY AND HERITAGE, BREATHTAKING SCENERY AND SOUND EFFECTS, and the EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME all at the Pride Week Patriot Days Festival. — T. Geronimo Johnson

Awakened by artillery fire, the frightened Confederate recruits ran out of town, some still in their bedclothes. The Federals gave this embarrassing retreat the derisive nickname of "The Battle of the Philippi Races. — Clint Johnson

In a landscape littered with all of this imagery about the nobility of the Civil War and the Confederate effort and struggle, the absence of markers says something really powerful. — Bryan Stevenson

An estimated 400 women disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War. Many were like Amy Clarke, who enlisted so she could remain with her husband when he joined the Confederate Army. Amy continued to fight after he was killed, and she was wounded herself and taken prisoner. — Gail Collins

In the morning we shed our blue sheep's clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress for it was more flatout and honest. The shirts were large with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have. Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself all astride my big bay horse with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips. When my awful costume was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped feint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness. — Daniel Woodrell