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“Everybody betrayed her, so why expect otherwise? But it turned out that distrust could fool you and endanger you, just as trust could.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Skinful of Shadows

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the
religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders.”
― Frederick Douglass, The Life of Frederick Douglass

“IX. THE PRICE OF DISASTER

The price of the disaster of slavery and civil war was the necessity of quickly assimilating into American democracy a mass of ignorant laborers in whose hands alone for the moment lay the power of preserving the ideals of popular government; of overthrowing a slave economy and establishing upon it an industry primarily for the profit of the workers. It was this price which in the end America refused to pay and today suffers for that refusal.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

“The father let his rifle down and stood its butt against the porch boards. The boy, though, kept alert. There was a good deal of killer about him, and it was why he still lived. The last four years had made a whole generation of young boys -- who ought to have been going to school and learning a trade and thrilling deep in their bones just to dance with a girl and peck her on the cheek -- into slit-eyed killers with no more tell of emotion than an old riverboat faro gambler.”
― Charles Frazier, Varina

“Now, early in 1865, the war is over. The North does not especially want free Negroes, it wants trade and wealth. The South does not want a particular interpretation of the Constitution. It wants cheap Negro labor and the political and social power based on it. Had there been no Negroes, there would have been no war. Had no Negroes survived the war, peace would have been difficult because of hatred, loss and bitter fried. But its logical path would have been straight.

The South would have returned to its place in congress with less than its former representation because of the growing North and West. These areas of growing manufacture and agriculture, railroad building and corporations, would have held the political power over the South until the South united with the new insurgency of the West or the Eastern democratic ideals. Industrialization might even have brought a third party representing labor and raised the proletariat to dominance.”
― W E B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

“Lincoln¡¯s liberal use of his pardoning power created the greatest tension between the two men (Lincoln and Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War). Stanton felt compelled to protect military discipline by exacting proper punishment for desertions or derelictions of duty, while Lincoln looked for any ¡°good excuse for saving a man¡¯s life.¡± When he found one, he said, ¡°I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends.¡±

Stanton would not allow himself such leniency. A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, ¡°the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of their heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turned, apparently unmoved, and walked into his private room.¡± The clerk thought Stanton an unfeeling tyrant, until he discovered him moments later, ¡°leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. ¡®God help me to do my duty; God help me to do my duty!¡¯ he was repeating in a low wail of anguish.¡± On such occasions, when Stanton felt he could not afford to set a precedent, he must have been secretly relieved that the president had the ultimate authority.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, ÈÊÕßÎ޵УºÁֿϵÄÕþÖÎÌì²Å

“A revolution is a military thing; it has all the military virtues; one of which is that it comes to an end. Two parties fight with deadly weapons, but under certain rules of arbitrary honor; the party that wins becomes the government and proceeds to govern. The aim of civil war, like the aim of all war, is peace¡­ They do not create revolution; what they do create is anarchy; and the difference between these is not a question of violence, but a question of fruitfulness and finality. Revolution of its nature produces government; anarchy only produces more anarchy. Men may have what opinions they please about the beheading of King Charles or King Louis, but they cannot deny that Bradshaw and Cromwell ruled, that Carnot and Napoleon governed. Someone conquered; something occurred. You can only knock off the King¡¯s head once. But you can knock off the King¡¯s hat any number of times. Destruction is finite, obstruction is infinite: so long as rebellion takes the form of mere disorder (instead of an attempt to enforce a new order) there is no logical end to it; it can feed on itself and renew itself forever.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman¡ªthe white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles¡ªthe work of a shell.

The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries¡ªsomething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey¡ªa startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.

Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.”
― Ambrose Bierce, Civil War Stories

“They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.”
― Ambrose Bierce, Civil War Stories

“If you come across someone who isn¡¯t cussing in the time of great anguish and distress then you¡¯ve met the one causing everyone else to cuss.”
― A. White

“Still, this was broken stone. It was not a human life.”
― Michael Ondaatje

“Let us have peace." But there was the black man looming like a dark ghost on the horizon. He was the child of force and greed, and the father of wealth and war. His labor was indispensable, and the loss of it would have cost many times the cost of the war. If the Negro has been silent, his very presence would have announced his plight. He was not silence. He was in usual evidence. He was writing petitions, making speeches, parading with returned soldiers, reciting his adventures as slave and freeman. Even dumb and still, he must be noticed. His poverty has to be relieved, and emancipation in his case had to mean poverty. If he had to work, he had to have land and tools. If his labor was in reality to be free labor, he had to have legal freedom and civil rights. His ignorance could only be removed by that very education which the law of the South had long denied him and the custom of the North had made exceedingly difficult. Thus civil status and legal freedom, food, clothes and tools, access to land and help to education, were the minimum demands of four million laborers, and these demands no man could ignore, Northerner or Southerner, Abolitionist or Copperhead, laborer or captain of industry. How did the nation face this paradox and dilemma?”
― W E B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

“We hit slavery through a great civil war. Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred between sections of the country: in the South, into political corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation of the public conscience, and the ever over-hanging dread of what the future may bring.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“Civil wars, just like the reign of terror, are but the accelerated domestication of a people by the covert powers. - On Domestication”
― Lamine Pearlheart

“I felt entangled now: this March, this South, this war, history. History could not possibly let the South get away with slavery; history would not possibly let us get away with what we were doing to the South. Somehow or other, we'd both have to pay.”
― Cynthia Bass, Sherman's March

“If things keep going the way they have in recent years, acrimonious historical debate may soon rival kudzu for prominence on the southern landscape”
― Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

“We are woken gently at three in the morning and told that we need to leave. Guided by the light of the stars rather than the moon, we walk for half an hour before we reach a hut. We can just about make out the presence of three men inside, but it's almost as dark as the balaclavas that hide their faces. In the identikit released by the Mexican government, Marcos was de-scribed as a professor with a degree in philosophy who wrote a thesis on Althusser and did a Master's at Paris-Sorbonne Univer-sity. A voice initially speaking French breaks the silence: ¡°We¡¯ve got twenty minutes. I prefer to speak Spanish if that¡¯s OK. I¡¯m Subcomandante Marcos.”
― Marco Lupis, Interviste del Secolo Breve

“I've heard of more ways to die in this war than I knew there were corpses. I've heard there isn't a battle where both sides don't shoot their own men -- sometimes on purpose and sometimes for mercy, but most of the time by mistake. I've heard boys on both sides are killing themselves, so they don't burn or smother or drown or starve, or pass whatever they're dying of to others. I've heard about guerrillas and murders and firing squads. I've reached the point where I don't know if anyone ever just dies from the other side's bullets.”
― Cynthia Bass, Sherman's March

“The camp lived up to expectations as warmly dressed guards forced them to undress outside the gate where they searched them for valuables and weapons. The captives stood for a long time in ice and show on that grim December 5, numb and shaking, while guards robbed them, according to Copley. Chicago had now received prisoners from most major battlefields of the Civil War, except Gettysburg and Antietem.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“Add the shortage of blankets, warm clothing, and vegetables, and the result was likely to be more suffering and more death than had occurred earlier. The war was not over for Hood's army as it came through the gates of Camp Douglas. Another struggle for survival was beginning, and the odds of success were no better in Chicago than at Franklin or Nashville.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“The situation was fast approaching that of 1863, when Chicago doctors labeled the prison an extermination camp.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“Portland, Maine was the site of one of the northernmost skirmishes of the Civil War! Called the Battle of Portland Harbor, it happened in the waters off Portland harbor involving two ships flying the Confederate flag. On June 24, 1863, having been attacked by these ships, the Union Revenue Cutter Cushing was abandoned by her twenty-four crewmen. Captain Charles Reed a Confederate Navy Lieutenant Reed and the Captain of the Confederate raider, the CSS Tacony, ordered the Cushing torched, causing its munitions to explode. Late on June 26, 1863, Reed and an armed party came ashore dressed as fishermen and raided the city. Knowing that there was no chance of escaping, Captain Reed and his raiding party surrendered to Mayor McLellan and were held as prisoners of war at Fort Preble in South Portland. Because public sentiments were hostile against Reed and his men, they were taken to Boston and held at Fort Warren for the remainder of the Civil War.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Salty & Saucy Maine"

“The implications of the true story are existential and corrosive to our larger national myth. To understand that the most costly war in this country's history was launched in direct opposition to everything the country claims to be, to understand that this war was the product of centuries of enslavement, which is to see an even longer, more total war, is to alter the accepted conception of America as a beacon of freedom. How does one face this truth or forge a national identity out of it?”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“Frank and other boys his age watched with wonder and excitement as squads drilled in vacant lots throughout the city. They fantasized about joining the Army to show support for the cause. If government let high-schoolers fight along side fathers, uncles and brothers, why not let fifth and sixth graders join the Army too?”
― J.D. Crighton, Detective in the White City: The Real Story of Frank Geyer

“Thousands of soldiers, ink barely dry on discharge papers, begged in vain to start a new campaign of revenge.”
― J.D. Crighton, Detective in the White City: The Real Story of Frank Geyer

“Why did the man who would become revered for generations as the Great Emancipator hesitate to do his "emancipating," and if it did take him so long, what is so "great" about that?”
― Todd Brewster, Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War

“By branding the rule of President al-Asad as illegitimate, Western countries may have been morally just, but they thereby prematurely blocked any opportunity they might have had to play a constructive role in finding a political solution to the crisis. The question was what should have priority: being morally correct or helping to find a solution?”
― Nikolaos van Dam, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria

“Getting history right is pretty much the most important thing a citizen can do in a nation at war with itself--as ours was. And is.”
― Brooke Gladstone

“We have heard so many different rumors, about different subjects, that we are rather slow to believe anything we don't see. (Money especially.)”
― James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War Letters from the Front

“They both knew the stakes were high and they were trapped in the inevitable, but there were far greater questions racing through their minds that night.”
― Lisa M. Prysock, Protecting Miss Jenna