The Civil War Quotes

“I am passionately interested in 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.”
― Ken Burns, The Civil War: An Illustrated History

“In London, Henry Adams cheered the Union triumph, but also saw in it an ominous portent: About a week ago [the British] discovered that their whole wooden navy was useless.… These are great times.… Man has mounted science, and is now run away with.… Before many centuries more … science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world. Even with the menace of the Merrimack now behind him, Lincoln’s blockade of southern ports was easier to declare than enforce. The Confederate coastline, broken by numberless inlets and 189 rivers, stretched from the Potomac to the Rio Grande—3,500 miles. When the war began, one-quarter of the navy’s regular officers had defected to the South, and Secretary of the Navy Welles was left with”
― Geoffrey C. Ward, The Civil War

“Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country's life, and lighted to burial by the meteors splendor of their native sky”
― Geoffrey C. Ward, The Civil War: An Illustrated History

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.… If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1838”
― Whiteford, The Civil War