Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.

I know that the Southern People prefer a Govt. of their own but as soon as it is demonstrated that there cannot be an independent Southern Confederacy, many then will yield obedience rather than lose their Estates.

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

If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded over states' rights. Yet when each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states' rights.

The South was right. Say it! Say it!

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.

Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us.

My opinion is that the Northern States will manage somehow to muddle through.

Speaking as a writer, it would be difficult to find an event in American history more dramatic and riveting than the Civil War.

Out of the west came Lincoln, and all that he had he gave to the preservation of the Union that had been bought so dearly and was falling to pieces.

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.

The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery.

The very first act of the Confederate Government was to send commissioners to Washington to make terms of peace, and to establish relations of amity between the two sections.

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.

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

Southern states in the confederacy were not ready to give up their fight to secede or give up their way of life, which was made possible in large part through the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves.

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

It seems impossible that the South can be mad enough to dissolve the Union.

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

There can be no neutrals in this war [the Civil War]—only patriots or traitors.

Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States.

Whereas, serious and alarming dissensions have arisen between the Northern and Southern States, concerning the rights and security of the rights of the slaveholding States, and especially their rights in the common territory of the United States; and whereas it is eminently desirable and proper that these dissensions, which now threaten the very existence of this Union, should be permanently quieted and settled by constitutional provisions, which shall do equal justice to all sections, and thereby restore to the people that peace and good will which ought to prevail between all the citizens of the United States: Therefore,…

I would direct your attention in some detail to the vast and irreparable calamity brought upon our nation in the last century by a tiny group of vociferous and crazed fanatics, the abolitionists, who forced upon the South its tragic war for independence.

Slavery has perished amid the war flames, and the mirage of the Confederacy has vanished, never again to return.