Roscoe Conkling Quotes

I regard it as a foregone conclusion that we shall ultimately whip the Yankees. We are bound to believe that, anyhow; but the war is going to be a long and terrible one, first. We've only just begun it, and very few of us will see the end. All I ask of fate is that I may be killed leading a cavalry charge

We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.

The Old Guard dies and never surrenders. La Vieille Garde meurt et ne se rend pas.

I can't spare this man—he fights.

Grant is of medium stature, yet has a well-developed physique, sandy whiskers and moustache, blue eyes, earnest, thoughtful, and far-seeing, a cigar in his mouth, a knife in one hand, and a stick in the other, which he is whittling to a point. He whittles slowly towards him. His thoughts are not yet crystallized. His words are few. Suddenly he commences upon the other end of the stick, and whittles energetically from him. His mind is made up,--his plan matured. He is less reticent,--talks freely. He is dressed in plain blue; and were it not for the three stars upon his shoulder, few would select him as the Lieutenant-General commanding all the armies of the Union in the field.

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.

The colored race saved to the noble women of New England and the middle States men on whom they lean today for security and safety. Many of my race, the representatives of these men on the field of battle, sleep in the countless graves of the South.

I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy.

God bless the Union; - it is dearer to us for the blood of brave men which has been shed in its defence.

The Union, which can alone insure internal peace, and external security to each State, Must and Shall be Preserved, cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood.

Believe me, then, that the great mass of the people of the North do not uphold the Administration on the principle of abolishing slavery, but that the restoration of the Union is the grand incentive; and while such is the fact, every nerve and every sinew will be strained to bring about a victorious end.--Would to Heaven that the blood already spilled was a sufficient sacrifice for this great result.

We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.

I used to think the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were a few redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.

I love my country and I am fighting for my country, but if this war [the Civil War] ever ends, I'll be dad-burned if I ever love another country.

There are but two parties now—traitors and patriots.

I want to tell you one thing. Do you know that if it was not for the Black man this war never would have been brought to a close with success to the Union, and the liberty to your race? I want you to understand that. Do you know it? Do you know it?...

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; Bravest of all in Frederick town, She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic-window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced: the old flag met his sight. "Halt!"—the dust-brown ranks stood fast. "Fire!"—out blazed the rifle-blast.  It shivered the window, pane and sash; It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf; She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will. "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said.

Public opinion said that every man who did not embrace the very surest and earliest opportunity of getting himself mustered into actual service was a coward.

Magazines and newspapers commonly took to celebrating the military valor of both Confederate and Union soldiers, as though bravery, rather than morality, were the chief quality to be commemorated.

Abraham Lincoln went through 12 generals before he got Ulysses S. Grant. He had never done a Civil War before.

Since before the Civil War, crosses have indeed garnished veterans' memorials from the North to the South, from Arlington to Normandy, and from the South Pacific to the Middle East.

Patriotism cannot be instilled inside anybody, it just happens to be there. And it can rise above any notion, any emotion.

For the average person, 98 percent of those who fought in the Civil War, they did not own slaves. They were simply answering the call, and in this case many, many young men - 17, 18 years old - coming in to defend what they saw as a federal invasion of Virginia, and they fought honorably.