The Civil War: Spoken Thoughts of War

Quotes I (1861-1863)

1860-1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 Quotes I (1861-1863)
Quotes II (1864-1865) Songs Poems

1861

1. March 4: Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address:
   "It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination" (Davis, 1996, p. 146).
2. London banker Baron Rothschild, when asked who would win the war:
   "The North. Why? Because it has the largest purse" (Davis, 1996, p. 196).
3. From The Times of London (Newspaper):
   "Let the Yankee breed be judged. Swagger and ferocity, built on a foundation of vulgarity and cowardice, these are the characteristics, and these are the prominent marks by which his countrymen, generally speaking, are known all over the world" (Davis, 1996, p. 198-199).
4. June 1: Confederate commander Pierre Beauregard's proclamation aimed at rousing the citizens to defend their state of Virginia:
   "A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil. Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints, has thrown his Abolitionist hosts among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property, and committing other acts of violence and outrage, too shocking and revolting to humanity to be enumerated" (Davis, 1996, p. 146)

   1862

   1. April 3: Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston to his troops before attacking General Grant's Army at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee:
      "Soldiers of the Army of the Mississippi: I have put you in motion to offer battle to the invaders of your country... You can but march to a decisive victory over... mercenaries sent to subjugate and despoil you of your liberties, property, and honor" (Davis, 1996, p. 223).
   2. Recounting the Battle of Shiloh: Sixteen-year-old Union regimental musician, John A. Cockerill:
      "Here beside a great oak tree I counted the corpses of fifteen men... The blue and the gray were mingled together... It was no uncommon thing to see the bodies of Federal and Confederate lying side by side as though they had bled to death while trying to aid each other" (Davis, 1996, p. 226-227).
   3. Bell Reynolds, a housewife from Peoria, Illinois, who had followed her husband into the field at Shiloh, became a battlefield nurse and an eyewitness to the carnage:
      "...And that operating table! These scenes come up before me now with all the vividness of reality... one by one, they would take from different parts of the hospital a poor fellow, lay him out on those bloody boards, and administer chloroform; but before insensibility, the operation would begin, and in the midst of shrieks, curses, and wild laughs, the surgeon would wield over his wretched victim the glittering knife and saw; and soon the severed and ghastly limb, white as snow and spattered with blood, would fall upon the floor-one more added to the terrible pile" (Davis, 1996, p. 228-229).
   4. August 22: Still looking to reassure the majority of those in the Union who didn't want to fight for abolition, Lincoln's response to a letter from Horace Greeley:
      "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it-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 also do that" (Davis, 1996, p. 255).

   1863

   1. Spring: the effect of the war on the Confederate economy in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy:
      "Shortages of supplies forced the inflation rate even higher. In January 1863 a Richmond newspaper printed a schedule showing that the weekly cost to feed a small family had risen from $6.55 in 1860 to $68.25 in 1863. By March 1863 flour was selling for $100 a barrel, beef was $2 a pound, apples were $25 a bushel, boots cost $50 per pair, and wood was $30 a cord. Simple necessities had become unaffordable luxuries" (Davis, 1996, p. 284-285).
   2. July 1: Description of the first day of action at Gettysburg by Union cannoneer Augustus Buell:
      "bullets hissing, humming, and whistling, everywhere; cannon roaring, all crash on crash, and peal on peal; smoke, dust, splinters, blood; wreck and carnage indescribable... Every man's shirt soaked with sweat, and many of them sopped with blood from wounds not severe enough to make such bulldogs let go-bareheaded, sleeves rolled up, faces blackened" (Davis, 1996, p. 298-299).
   3. An anonymous New Yorker's response to the Consciption Act:
      "Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to the decree. We are the poor who have no wealth to purchase liberty" (Davis, 1996, p. 315).
   4. November 19: Excerpt from The Gettysburg Address delivered by President Lincoln:
      "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" (Davis, 1996, p. 270).
   5. December 31: From the diary of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles:
      "The year closes more satisfactorily than it commenced... The War has been waged with success, although there have been in some instances errors and misfortunes. But the heart of the nationis sounder and its hopes brighter" (Davis, 1996, p. 338).