Zebulon Baird Vance Quotes

I am yet unprepared to give up the Union for a peace which, so achieved, could not be of much duration.--

The South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession.

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.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

And we love to dance, especially that new one called the Civil War Twist. The Northern part of you stands still while the Southern part tries to secede.

Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace?

This union has been divided in like a civil war - brother against brother - sister against sister. And I'm pulling it together. We've already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.

If the Union is once severed, the line of separation will grow wider and wider, and the controversies which are now debated and settled in the halls of legislation will then be tried in fields of battle and determined by the sword.

The people of the North are not enemies but friends and brethren of the South, faithful and true as in the days when death has dealt his arrows promiscuously among them on the common battlefields of freedom.

Any division of the United States through secession of individual States from the Union inevitably must lead to civil wars.

War would not only present the most effectual means of destroying [the Union] but would banish all hope of its peaceable reconstruction.

Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.

One [section of the nation] would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter.

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,…

When this war ends, there must be no bloody business.

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.

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

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace.... Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.

The Civil War is a story about how some people clung to the past, while others sought the future.

The Civil War still remains the crossroads of our being.

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

The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force.

The question of what actually caused the Civil War is secondary to the result of the Civil War, which is that after the war was over, slavery was ended, and the North and the South reconciled. And I think we need to respect that.

Our Southern brethren have done grievously, they have rebelled and have attacked their father's house and their loyal brothers. They must be punished and brought back, but this necessity breaks my heart.