Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

Mr. Lincoln is the next President. We must try to save the Union. I will go South.

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

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

…moderates were inexorably sucked into the vortexes of the sectional passions that led to the war. [American Civil War]

The irrepressible conflict propounded by abolitionism has produced now its legitimate fruits - disunion.

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

The American Civil War was the wrangling of two armed mobs.

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.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

If it is a crime to love the South, its cause and its President, then I am a criminal. I would rather lie down in this prison and die than leave it owing allegiance to a government such as yours.

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

The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate, was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln's election.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

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

The South was right. Say it! Say it!

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.

No solid South, no solid North, save when solid for the flag and the Union.

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

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,…

Will President Polk accept one or more regiments of colored soldiers for the great Southern War? Surely, according to Southern doctrine, they are the only persons adapted to that climate? We should like to have an answer from some of the President's friends, we care not of what politics.

The Civil war made us a nation rather then an association of states.

The only safety of the South from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union

The slave power of the South and the banking power of the North ... are now uniting to rule the country.

At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, African slavery existed in twelve of the thirteen States. Slaves are recognized as property, and as a basis of political power, by the Federal Compact, and special provisions are made by that instrument for their protection as property…. the opponents of slavery shall arrest its further expansion, and by Congressional Legislation exclude it from the common Territories of the Federal Government, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction…. Abraham Lincoln--he stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all constitutional barriers, ignores the obligation of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down sovereignty and equality of the states, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma—the equality of the races white and black.

I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern states.