Abraham Lincoln
|
"All the armies of Europe and Asia could not, by force,
take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the
trial of a thousand years. If destruction is to be our lot, we ourselves
must be its authors. As a nation of freemen we shall live
forever or die by suicide."
Abraham Lincoln |
| "Fourscore and seven years
ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived
in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now, we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that Nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We
are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their
lives that that Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that thisNation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the People by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln -
"Run ole har'. If I was a har' I'd run too."
Confederate soldier on seeing a rabbit race to the rear
as the troops advanced
"Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country's life and lighted at burial by the meteor splendour of their native sky."
Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on the dead at Fredericksburg |
"I do not see that I can
do much good to these wounded and dying; but I cannot leave them. Once
in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I
can for him; at any rate stop with him and sit with him for hours, if he
wishes it."
Walt Whitman, Specimen Days
"Up men and to your posts! Don't forget that you are from old Virginia!" General Pickett to his men as they prepared to charge at Gettysburg |
"South carolina is too small for a Republic,
and too large for an insane asylum"
Southern politician
"Look men, there is Jackson and his Virginians,standing like a stone wall!" Confederate officer trying to rally his men at First Bull
Run
"This body of men moving along with no order, their guns carried in every fashion, no two dressed alike, the officers barely distinguishable from the privates, were these the men who had driven back, again and again, our splendid legions? They were the dirtiest men I ever saw, the most ragged, lean and hungry set of wolves. Yet there was a dash about them that the northern men lacked." A northern woman watching Lee's army pass by on its invasion
of Maryland.
"The triumph of the Confederacy would be a victory of the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of friends all over the civilised world. The American Civil War is destined to be a turning point for good or evil of the course of human affairs." John Stuart Mill |
The Civil war took more lives than any other in American history. It was played out on a canvas that stretched from the outskirts of Washington to the Gulf of Mexico, from the harbours of the Carolinas to the New Mexico territories. It took millions of men who had hitherto known little of the nation beyond the confines of their own townships and transported them by train, steamboat, corduroy road, horseback and foot all over their vast land. A mere three generations after the Declaration of Independence, America would for a time be host to the largest army on the face of the earth; a feat she has never ever repeated. The war was caused by a quarrel over states rights, especially the right of a state to secede from the Union. This quarrel however was a direct result of the emotions roused by the institution of slavery, which still existed in the South, and whether it should be permitted in the new territories out west that were eager to join the United States. Slavery was an issue so reprehensible and volatile that it had been swept under the carpet for years (except for the clarion calls of radical abolitionists, the oratory of Frederick Douglas, himself a freed slave, the rantings of vehement pro-slavery southerners and the sullen presence of the blacks in bondage). It wasnt until two years into the war that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, but long before that most had seen that the moral high ground, along with the navy, almost all the industry and a vastly greater population, belonged to the Union. For all their dash, courage and astonishing battlefield skills there was no mistaking the fact that the troops clad in grey and butternut were ultimately defending an institution that was evil and despicable and has no place in the lives of civilized men. There are myriad easily-found sources of information on the Civil War, so I shall briefly describe just one battle. It was not the greatest battle of the war, nor the bloodiest. It was not even particularly important, except to the men who suffered there. It didnt alter the course of the war. It did, however, point a bold finger and say in no uncertain terms, This is the future, ignore it at your peril.EIt was ignored though. even by Bobby Lee who, if he had learned the lesson would never have unleashed Picketts charge at Gettysburg. It was ignored by almost everyone else and the future slaughter of so many men in so many parts of the world, was often the result of an unwillingness to accept and find a way to counter the lessons of that day. If the actions of men at war can be compared to a family tree, then the carnage of the Western Front 1914-18 can perhaps be called a monstrous scion of the Battle of Fredericksburg. |