William Lloyd Garrison Quotes

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

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.

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

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

The Free States have a majority of 44 in that House. Under the new census, they would have 53. The cause of the slaveholding States is getting weaker and weaker, and what are we to do? What would the South have to rely on, if the Union were dissolved? Suppose the dissolution could be peaceably … what had the South to depend upon? All the crowned heads [of Europe] were against her. A million of slaves are ready to rise and strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum. If the South is cut loose from their friends at the North … whither are they to look for protection? How are they to sustain an assault from England or France, with the cancer at their vitals? The more the South reflected, the more clearly she must see that she has a deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free.

I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.

Our people now, one and all, are determined to sustain the Government and demand a vigorous prosecution of the war inaugurated by the disunionists. All sympathy with them is dead.

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.

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 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?...

I, ______ do solemnly swear, (or affirm) in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. So help me God.

It is a revolution; a revolution of the most intense character; in which belief in the justice, prudence, and wisdom of secession is blended with the keenest sense of wrong and outrage, and it can no more be checked by human effort for the time than a prairie fire by a gardener’s watering pot.

We are fairly engaged in a war which cannot be a short one, even though our enemies should before long lay down their arms; for it is a war not merely to support and defend the Constitution and to retake the property of the United States, not merely to settle the question of the right of a majority to control an insolent and rebellious minority in the republic, nor to establish the fact of the national existence and historic unity of the United States; but it is also and more essentially a war for the establishment of civilization in that immense portion of our country in which for many years barbarism has been gaining power. It is for the establishment of liberty and justice, of freedom of conscience and liberty of thought, of equal law and of personal rights, throughout the South. If these are not to be secured without the abolition of slavery, it is a war for the abolition of slavery.

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

… the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider... That thought was our power

There would never have been secession if demagogues had not swayed non-slaveholding voters and naïve young soldiers to believe that the North was filled with cowards, poltroons, and negro-worshippers.

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.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.

The Union - It is dear to us, but liberty is dearer.

If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only will the North fight, but she will also triumph. The experiment of secession will fail, and the South, in ruin and desolation, will bitterly repent the day when she attempted to overthrow a wise and beneficent government.

I pledged California to a Northern Republic and to a flag that should have no treacherous threads of cotton in its warp, and the audience came down in thunder.

I have entered the field to die, if need be, for this government, and never expect to return to peaceful pursuits until the object of this war of preservation has become a fact established.

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.

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.