Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

The slave-owning South won the subsequent ideological war…the consensus of history was that the Civil War had little to do with slavery.

I grew up in the South, so a huge part of our American History education revolved around the Civil War.

In the mid 19th century, it had taken a generation of political rhetoric to induce southern soldiers to fight for the interests of a small ruling class in the name of democracy.

The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.

When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.

The Army runs Fort A.P. Hill, named for a Confederate general whose men killed African American soldiers after they surrendered.

You know how absurd is the fiction put forward by our enemies in the Northern states that the great Civil War which raged between 1861 and 1865 would never have taken place but for Jefferson Davis and myself. Such mighty convulsions, which amount indeed to revolutions, are never the work of individuals, but of divided nations.

… the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question. … concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters.

Reelect Abraham Lincoln Save the Union Heal the Nation Give Me Another Shot

A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil. Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints, has thrown his abolition hosts among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property, and committing other acts of violence and outrage too shocking and revolting to humanity to be enumerated. All rules of civilized warfare are abandoned...

You gotta understand - the state of Mississippi was in rebellion. It had rebelled against the United States. Now that has been a very difficult story for America to tell, but that's what actually happened.

It's head-scratching, really, that the most prominent Army base in America is named for Braxton Bragg. He was on the wrong side of history, as a Confederate general and a slave owner.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

As long as it served his purpose, Mr. Lincoln boldly advocated the right of Secession.

We can only imagine the history of the free world today if, at the end of the Civil War, there had been two countries: the United States and the Confederate States of America.

America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law.

I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War.

With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the Constitution have kept America whole and free.

As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.

It takes some serious mental gymnastics to think of the Confederacy only as a romantic lost cause.

The South was my country but the South went to war on account of slavery.

The South was right. Say it! Say it!

After the Civil war, everybody in retrospect claimed to be an abolitionist. It’s amazing that slavery survived so long when there were so many abolitionists.

I will pardon Jeff Davis, if he asks for it.