Quotes
Quotes
“There is a class of people [in the South], men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”
“The government of the U.S. has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their land, their everything…war is simply unrestrained by the Constitution…to the persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better…Yankee General William T. Sherman
"We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." President Jefferson Davis - 29 April 1861
"I am with the South in life or in death, in victory
or in defeat...... I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war
on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and
the fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that all
government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about
to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and inaugurate a servile
insurrection, murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of
the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone."
Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA
"If this cause, that is dear to my heart, is doomed to
fail, I pray heaven may let me fall with it, while my face is toward the enemy
and my arm battling for that which I know is right."
Major General Patrick R. Cleburne before his fatal wound at the battle
of Franklin, Tennessee.
"As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty
per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest
interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the
undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its
close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and
returning to the Union."
Major General John B. Gordon, from his book, Causes of
the Civil War.
"You have no right to ask, or expect that she will at once
profess unbounded love to that Union from which for four years she tried to
escape at the cost of her best blood and all her treasure. Nor can you believe
her to be so unutterably hypocritical, so base, as to declare that the flag of
the Union has already surpassed in her heart the place which has so long been
sacred to the 'Southern Cross.' "
General Wade Hampton
"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." General Robert E. Lee to Governor Stockdale of Texas
"The South is a land that has known sorrows; it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with her tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead; but a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories.
To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, every pulsation of my heart is consecrated forever. I was born of her womb, I was nourished at her breast, and, when my last hour shall come, I pray God that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep within her tender and encircling arms." Edward W. Carmack, of Tennessee, September 1916.
20 Aug 2009