Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

“In view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of republican government,” resolved the Michigan convention, “and against the schemes of aristocracy the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed, or man debased, we will co-operate and be known as Republicans.”

🤔

Abraham Lincoln voiced the Republican dilemma in this matter. “Of their principles,” Lincoln said of the Know Nothings, “I think little better than I do of the slavery extensionists. . . . Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ’all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Abraham Lincoln was so amazing. I'll leave it at that.

James Bulloch

Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle

Hence the paradox of Bull Run: its legacy of confidence both hurt and helped the South; the humiliation and renewed determination both hurt and helped the North.

This was VERY interesting. I had never thought Bull Run in that way before.

“We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”5

The generations have passed, I fear.