Civil War quotes
117 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"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."
"In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong."
"A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever."
"The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside civil war — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered on a new and enlarged arena."
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."
"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."
"Virginians! With me! Who will come with me!?"
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."
"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."
"the better angels of our nature"
"A war between Europeans is a civil war."
"Let us strive on to finish the work we are in."
"It was not war, it was murder."
"With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."
"Care for him who shall have borne the battle"
"It is always good men who do the most harm in the world."
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling."
"The Almighty has His own purposes."
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other."
"War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war."
"It is rather for us 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."
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty"
