William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them. [The Seminole Indians]

[We must defend ourselves] against all Indians in generall, for that they are all Enemies

In the course of these contests [the Seminole Wars] the rights of Indian and Negro alike were ruthlessly disregarded. There was redress for neither before the courts, and at the end in dealing with them every honorable principle of men and nations was violated.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

The Indians are known to conduct their wars so entirely without faith and humanity that it would bring eternal infamy on the Ministry … if they should excite these savages to war …

We did not expect to conquer the whites. I took up the hatchet to revenge the injuries which my people could no longer endure. Had I borne them without striking, my people would have said - "Black Hawk is a woman; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sauk.

I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.

Another important acquisition of territory has also been made since the last session of Congress. The friendly tribe of Kaskaskia Indians with which we have never had a difference, reduced by the wars and wants of savage life to a few individuals unable to defend themselves against the neighboring tribes, has transferred its country to the United States, reserving only for its members what is sufficient to maintain them in an agricultural way

At the time the Constitution was framed, the idea of appealing to an American court of justice for an assertion of right or a redress of wrong had perhaps never entered the mind of an Indian or of his tribe. Their appeal was to the tomahawk, or to the Government.

The Apache Indian, superior in strength to the Mexican, [has] gradually extirpated every trace of civilization, and roamed uninterrupted and unmolested, sole possessor of what was once a thriving and populous Spanish province.

Civilization or death to all American savages!

Indians in the territory of Utah have, with but few exceptions, continued quiet and peaceable.

The conduct of Germany is almost unexampled in human history. The terrible responsibility which lies at her doors can be seen in the fact that not less than seven million dead lie buried in Europe, while more than twenty million others carry upon them the evidence of wounds and sufferings, because Germany saw fit to gratify her lust for tyranny by resort to war.

At the Imperial Conference on December 1, it was decided to make war against England and the United States.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

We are not at war with Egypt. We are in an armed conflict.

Let no one refer to the sword of Napoleon I as the instrument of progress and civilization!

What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one.

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.

If Pocahontas had been given the foresight to see what devastating consequences her actions and belief in the possibility of peace would have brought upon her people, I wonder if she would have avoided befriending the English or not.

The negative cost of Lewis and Clark entering the Garden of Eden is that later expeditions regardless of what they were intended to do, later expeditions did not deal with the native peoples with the intelligence with the almost kindly resolve that Lewis and Clark did.

The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.

Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy.

... force is the natural ally of superstition, and superstition knows it well.

Flagrant injustice, cruelty and oppression…if left unchecked will so multiply that the whole of the native border tribes will be provoked into a battle of dangerous exasperation.