Jay Winik Quotes

My memoirs were written, and a portion of them already in the hands of the publishers, when the startling news came which has thrilled all Europe and filled her inhabitants with horror - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.

It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence.

The remark has been made that in the Civil War the North reaped the victory and the South the glory.

Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men.

Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln was the most important man to ever occupy the White House because he abolished slavery and kept the states united through a bloody civil war.

Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

Obviously, 'Lincoln' is not about the telegraph operator. There's a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I'm in.

Glorious News. Lincoln and Seward Assassinated! Andy Johnson Inaugurated President.

I was born about 80 years too late. If you were a kid in 1910, the Fourth of July was a big deal. You knew all about the Revolution, and you still had Civil War veterans.

Abraham Lincoln is singular. Abraham Lincoln, before he was killed, stood up and, you know, for the first time from any sitting president, stood for the right for suffrage for African-American men who had served in the Civil War. And that's a limited suffrage, but it was quite radical at the time.

The American war of 1861-65 is recent enough to be embedded still in cultural memory.

Abraham Lincoln was killed by the forces of white supremacy.

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

I'm reading "Team of Rivals'' I'll probably ending up reading a bunch of books about the Civil War. But I think my all-time favorite book about the war is the novel, "The Killer Angels'' by Michael Shaara.

During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.

When I read that I had to go to Gettysburg.

The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.

The market literature, which was particularly strong in Igboland, in Onitsha, today it is no longer strong. It is one of the victims of the civil war, that market was actually destroyed and at the end of the war a new Nigeria has struggled to come into being and I believe that what is probably going to replace the market literature might be the video, which they have taken to in a big way, creating dramas. So that may be the next thing way we will see coming out of the local basic level in our society.

I suppose I've been interested in Abraham Lincoln for almost as long as I can remember. My first Lincoln book was the Classics Illustrated comic book version of the life of Lincoln, and with that, I was hooked.

Few generals were as brilliant as Robert E. Lee and few battles as titanic -- and puzzling -- as Gettysburg. Why did Lee fail? In Lost Triumph, Tom Carhart offers a bold and provocative new assessment. Agree or disagree, it is sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.

At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the christian world, to history, and on my final account to God.

When you think about the current present value of the fossil fuel reserves that are on the books, the current fossil fuel companies, the last time that that much wealth was at stake was when the South fought the Civil War.