Quotes Leading Up to the War

[thea_447]

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." _ Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer (1709-1784). (To which Ambrose Bierce later commented, "I beg to submit that it is the first.")

[unionblue]

"Winter has gone and spring has come again...how pleasant it is to walk far ther in green meadows or on the sunny side of the flower decked hills!...But alas, the din of war, and clash of arems are distracting our once happy land. The sectional strife, arising chiefly from the unfortunate contest about slavery has culminated and the result is a civil war between North and South...Active preparations for war are going on through the whole land."

From the diary of The Reverend Abraham Essick, during the spring of 1861.

Unionblue

[unionblue]

"No material change in the state of the Union. It's a sick nation, and I fear it must be worse before it is better. The growing vigorous North must sooner or later assert its right to equality with the stagnant, semi barbarous South, and that assertion must bring on a struggle and convulsion."

"It must come."

George Templeton Strong of New York in his diary.

Unionblue

[cedarstripper]

From the diary of George Templeton Strong:


21 June 1860 . . . The Democratic Baltimore Convention is still sitting; and none the easier for sitting. The great old Democratic Party is in articulo mortis; its convention is abolishing of itself, and just on the eve of suicide by dismemberment and disintegration, after the manner of certain star-fishes. . . . If Douglas be nominated, a Southern limb drops off. If any other man is nominated, a Northwestern ray or arm secedes. Southern swashbucklers demand an ultra-****** platform that would cost the party every Northern state; unless it be adopted, they will depart to put on their war paint and whet their scalping knives. The worst temper prevails; delegates punch each other and produce revolvers. In short, a wasps' nest divided against itself is a pastoral symphony compared to this Witenagemot. Its session has abounded thus far in scandalous, shameful brutalities and indecencies that disgrace the whole country and illustrate the terrible pace at which we seem traveling down hill toward sheer barbarism and savagry.

The Convention has made little progress yet -- has not even succeeded in defining its own identity. Its throes and gripings have thus far been on the question whether certain chivalric delegations that seceded at Charleston shall be received back digested and assimilated, or rejected as foreign matter. The New York delegation seems to hold the balance of power. . . . But the elements of the Convention are in unstable combination, and it is likely to decompose with an explosion like chloride of nitrogen, or disintegrate like a Prince Rupert's drop, on the slightest provocation before it nominates anybody. And, if one half of its bullies and blackguards and Southern gentlemen will make free use of their revolvers on the other half, during the general reaction and melee that is like to accompany the act of decomposition, and will then get themselves decently hanged for homicide, the country will be safe; and millions yet unborn will bless the day when the Baltimore Convention of 1860 exploded and the Democratic Party ceased to exist.

9 October 1860 Tomorrow we shall hear of today's state elections in Pennsylvania. Its result, if favorable to the Republicans, will be decisive, and one may in that case predict Lincoln's election by the people with entire confidence. What shall little South Carolina do then? If she doesn't secede, she will be utterly ridiculous. She will have to make her choice between the guilt of treason and the contempt of mankind. . . .

25 October 1860 We have reason to be unsettled and alarmed. A large and influential Southern party is working hard for disunion, and in South Carolina, at least, is strong enough to overawe and silence the sensible and conservative minority. Lincoln's election will certainly be followed by a revolutionary movement there. Then we shall see. If no other state join her in secession and if she have time to cool down and recover her senses before any actual collision, and if no accident complicate the situation, this dangerous point may be weathered. But if things take another turn, the black year of 1860 will long be remembered. At best, we must expect an ugly shock and an anxious time before this year is ended.

If they were not such a race of braggarts and ruffians, I should be sorry for our fire-eathing brethren, weighed down, suffocated, and paralyzed by a ****** incubus 4,000,000 strong, of which no mortal can tell them how they are to get rid, and without a friend in the world except the cotton buyers who make money out of them, and the King of Dahomey. The sense of the civilized world is against them. They know that even the manufacturers and traders who profit by them condemn the institution on which their social system rests. And now their own country decides against their real or imaginary interests, and gives a judgment which they consider (and perhaps correctly on the whole) to be a censure, and which many of them suppose commits the government to a policy hostile to them and endangering their peace and safety. "

[elektratig]

In response to the charge of Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi that Henry Clay, a native son of the South, had betrayed the South by proposing what ultimately became the Compromise of 1850:

"I know whence I came, and I know my duty, and I am ready to submit to any responsibility which belongs to me as a senator from a slaveholding State. Sir, I have heard something said on this and on a former occasion about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe my allegiance. . . . My allegiance is to this Union and to my own State; but if gentlemen suppose that they can exact from me an acknowledgement of an allegiance to any ideal or future contemplated confederacy of the South, I here declare that I own no allegiance to it; nor will I, for one, come under any such allegiance if I can avoid it."

[thea_447]

Not a quote from the period in question, but an interesting notion, nevertheless.....

....."I have always been struck by the intensity of the feelings generated against slavery and slaveholders in men who had no direct or first-hand contact with either. It is conceivable, of course, that they reacted solely to an abstraction which deeply offended their sensibilities and moral values. Yet there was much about their actions and reactions which suggested something more real and personal. I have, therefore, turned to their own environment and experiences in the hope of finding some clue. I have suggested the possibility that behind the determination to put slavery on the road to ultimate extinction there may have lain drives that had little do with Negro slavery or the American South, as well as others that were the direct product of slavery itself and of the so-called "Slave Power."

More and more I have become convinced that the great body of Americans in 1860 were moderate and conservative in their attitudes; that they came to the brink of Civil War reluctantly. If the term "fire-eater" must be applied it should, I think, be equally distributed between Northerners and Southerners, and it should not be allowed to hide the fact that the great majorities, North and South, were not of this breed.

Lastly I have thought that it might be helpful to understand a very complex past by the use of present-day terms. I have tried to show how absurbd it is for historians to argue over the question as to whether the war could have been avoided. Of course it could, that is, if things had not gotten into the shape they did, and if men had been willing or able to pay the price required for maintaining the peace. Some things, however, are priceless. I have also tried to say that those who can think only in terms of abstractions and legalities (right and rights) had better prepare to use force in the end. There seems to be no other alternative." (Avery Craven, Civil War in the Making 1815-1860, Louisiana State University Press, copyright 1959, preface,pp. viii,ix)

[thea_447]

Not necessarily where this should be placed but I could not find the "Off Topic" thread so I beg pardon of all. I thought this was a wonderful quote:

"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever."--Clarence Darrow

[thea_447]

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a
people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A
vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public
conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free
government, or the blessings of liberty, can be
preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to
justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and
virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental
principles."---Patrick Henry

[matthew mckeon]

Thea,
I love this thread, and enjoyed and learned a lot from many of your posts.

"Slavery is the natural and normal condition of society...the situation of the North is abnormal and anomalous...we slaveholders say you must recur to domestic slavery, the oldest, the best, the most common form of Socialism...the natural and normal condition of laboring men, white or black."

George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All, or Slaves Without Masters

[matthew mckeon]

Here's another one:
"Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger...I lived with Mr. Covey for one year. During the first six months of that year, scare a week passed without his whipping me...Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!"
Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845