"The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered on a new and enlarged arena."
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Quote collection
Jefferson Davis quotes (page 2 of 3)
56 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The withdrawal of a State from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a Sovereign a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language."
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"I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came."
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"The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise."
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"It is our duty to keep the memory of our heroes green. Yet they belong to the whole country; they belong to America."
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"Lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished—a reunited country."
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"A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain."
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"I will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or not they do agree, and find that they differ - radically, essentially, irreconcilably differ - what belongs to an honorable position except to part? They cannot consistently act together any longer."
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"The Slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline, and thus made unfit for slavery. And as soon as he becomes unfit for slavery, the master will no longer desire to hold him as a slave."
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"Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth."
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"If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory."
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"Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished."
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"Sir, it is true that republics have often been cradled in war, but more often they have met with a grave in that cradle. Peace is the interest, the policy, the nature of a popular Government. War may bring benefits to a few, but privation and loss are the lot of the many. An appeal to arms should be the last resort, and only by national rights or national honor can it be justified."
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"Your little army, derided for its want of arms, derided for its lack of all the essential material of war, has met the grand army of the enemy, routed it at every point, and now it flies, inglorious in retreat before our victorious columns. We have taught them a lesson in their invasion of the sacred soil of Virginia."
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"The troops of other states have their reputation to gain, the sons of the Alamo have theirs to maintain."
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"At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution."
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"It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States."
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"Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable."
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"For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the South."
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"It is a duty we owe to posterity to see that our children shall know the virtues, and rise worthy of their sires."
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