Confederate Quotes

The consolidation of the States into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.
--General Robert E Lee

"All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
Gen. Robert E. Lee

"We could have pursued no other course without dishonour. And as sad as theresults have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner."
General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A.

President Jefferson Davis: "The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form."

"We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." President Jefferson Davis, 29 April, 1861

"When certain sovereign and independent states form a union with limited powers for some general purpose, and any one or more of them, in the progress of time, suffer unjust and oppressive grievances for which there is no redress but in a withdrawal from the association, is such withdrawal an insurrection? If so, then of what advantage is a compact of union to states? Within the Union are oppressions and grievances; the attempt to go out brings war and subjugation. The ambitious and aggressive states obtain possession of the central authority which, having grown strong in the lapse of time, asserts its entire sovereignty over the states.

Whichever of them denies it and seeks to retire is declared to be guilty of insurrection, its citizens are stigmatized as "rebels", as if they revolted against a master, and a war of subjugation is begun. If this action is once tolerated, where will it end? Where is constitutional liberty? What strength is there in bills of rights-in limitation of power? What new hope for mankind is to be found in written constitutions, what remedy which did not exist under kings of emperors? If the doctrines thus announced by the government of the United States are conceded, then look through either end of the political telescope, and one sees only an empire, and the once famous Declaration of Independence trodden in the dust of as a "glittering generality," and the compact of the union denounced as a "flaunting lie".

President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis in a speech to fellow Southerners 1882:

"Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known all that was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again."

Patrick Cleburne

" …I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who
have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the
fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that
all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They
are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and
inaugurate a servile insurrection, murder our men and dishonor our women.
We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be
left alone." Major General Patrick Cleburne

Thomas Jefferson

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That
all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people
(10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus
specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition."
--- Thomas Jefferson

"If the Union was formed by the accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States." ---Daniel Webster, US Senate, February 15, 1833

Henry Cabot Lodge

Senator from Massachusetts, added years later, "It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country...who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every state has a right to withdraw. " In fact, several states refused to accept such permanency. The states relented only after being assured of the possibility of 'peaceful withdrawal' if the experiment failed."

Francis W. Springer's War for What?

"The Union of Sovereign States, each state deriving its powers from its own people, and the federal government having only those powers granted it by the states, ended when Lincoln was allowed to eviscerate the Constitution. Lincoln did not save the Union, the Union that the delegates founded in 1788. A new Union was created in the 1860s with power over the states, power usurped by deception and maintained by force."

"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states." Charles Dickens, 1862,

New Orleans Daily Crescent-1861
"They (the South) know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They (the North) are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it."

Senator Thomas Hart Benton

"Under Federal Legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal Revenue. Virginia, the two Carolina's, and Georgia, may be said to defray three fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. that expenditure flows in an opposite direction -- it flows north, in one uniform, uninterrupted and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the south and rises up in the north. Federal Legislation does this." - Senator Thomas Hart Benton

Capt. Wm. H. S. Burgwyn, CSA

"The rank and file were chiefly farmers and small merchants,
comparatively very few were owners of slaves; but they were all
descended from ancestors whose fortunes and blood had been freely
spent in the war of the revolution; they volunteered in obedience to
the call of their state to resist invasion; they came with a firm
determination to do their full duty." -Capt. Wm. H. S. Burgwyn, 35th
Regiment, North Carolina Troops

Arthur J. L. Fremantle (touring British officer)

"But the mass of respectable Northerners, though they may be willing to pay, do not very naturally feel themselves called upon to give their blood
in a war of aggression, ambition, and conquest; for this war is essentially
a war of conquest. If ever a nation did wage such a war, the North is now
engaged, with a determination worthy of a more hopeful cause, in
endeavouring to conquer the South; but the more I think of all that I have
seen in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole population, the
more I feel inclined to say with General Polk----["How can you subjugate
such a people as this?"] and even supposing that their extermination were a
feasible plan, as some Northerners have suggested, I never can believe
that in the nineteenth century the civilised world will be condemned to
witness the destruction of such a gallant race."

Charlton Heston

"I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war

that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your

heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing life blood of liberty inside

you....the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the

miracle that it is." --Charlton Heston, Harvard Law School Forum, February

16, 1999

Abe Lincoln

when asked "Why not let the South go in peace?"
Lincoln replied: "I can't let them go. Who would pay for the government?"

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the
right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new
one that suits them better. This is a most valuable a most sacred right
a right, which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this
right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing
government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that
can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they
inhabit." -- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln said: " ... in saving the union, I have destroyed the Republic. Before me I have the Confederacy, which I loath. *But behind me I have the bankers, which I fear

In order to coalesce the forces in the North, Lincoln had to stage an
incident to inflame the populace, which he did. The firing on Sumter was
by his own admission a setup for just such action. Lincoln was aware
that provisioning Sumter could provoke a war.

Lincoln's letter to Gustavus Fox on 1 May, 1861, makes it clear that he
was pleased by the result of the firing on Ft Sumter..." You and I both
anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making
the attempt to provision Ft Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no
small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the
result. "

Abraham Lincoln said the following on September 18, 1858 in a speech in
Charleston, Illinois:
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been , in favor of bringing
about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black
races [applause]: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to
intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there
is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe
will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and
political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do
remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I
as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race." Abe Lincoln

"The [Emancipation] proclamation has no constitutional or legal
justification except as a war measure."
Letter to Sec. of Treas. Salmon P. Chase; 3 Sep 1863

"The suspension of the habeas corpus was for the purpose that men may be
arrested and held in prison who cannot be proved guilty of any defined crime."

London Times 7 November 1861:

The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for
independence on that of the South...

Charlie Lott

If the South had only wanted to protect slavery, all they had to do was go along with the ORIGINAL 13th Amendment, offered in early 1861 after several states had seceded, which would have protected slavery for all time in the states where it then existed. This was not inducement enough to bring South Carolina or any others back into the fold. The States of the Confederacy, even today, could block the passage of the 13th Amendment, and certainly could have then. This is exactly why the Slaveholders wanted to stay in the Union.. Their "property" was protected by the Constitution.. Charlie Lott

The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty. Karl Marx, 1861

H.L. Mencken

"The Gettysburg speech... The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who
died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of
self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for
the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine
anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought
against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the
right of their people to govern themselves." -- H.L. Mencken

Lewis Goldburg

Lincoln's war implied, and the Gettysburg Address set to words, a firm message to the States of the Union - "I love you all, and if you leave me, I'll hunt you down and kill you." The Address was not the sagely comments of a wise statesman, rather the vain, obsessive rantings of a power-hungry demon engaging in a blood-thirsty mission of self-aggrandizement, no matter the volume of corpses required to attain it.

The London (England) Spectator said "the Union government liberates the
enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the
conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another,
but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

According to Rhodes, in his "History of the United States," Vol. IV., page 344, he says; "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was not issued from a humane standpoint. Lincoln hoped it would incite the Negroes to rise against the women and children." "His Emancipation Proclamation was intended only as a punishment for the seceding states. It was with no thought of freeing the slaves of more than 300,000 slaveholders then in the Northern army." "His Emancipation Proclamation was issued for a fourfold purpose and it was issued with fear and trepidation lest he should offend his Northern constituents. He did it: "First: Because of an oath - that if Lee should be driven from Maryland he would free the slaves." "Second: The time of enlistment had expired for many men in the army and he hoped this would encourage their re-enlistment." "Third: Trusting that Southern men would be forced to return home to protect their wives and children from Negro insurrection." "Fourth: Above all he issued it to prevent foreign nations from recognizing the Confederacy."

Lincoln admitted that he thought that the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation would "result in the massacre of women and children in the South." No mass insurrection ever took place. The violence that did occur as result of Lincoln's document took place in the North.

In New York, the most violent riot ever in the United States took place as citizens protested against Lincoln's political maneuver coupled with his initiation of the draft. On July 13, 1863, in New York City, a riot broke out and raged for 3 days in what historian Burke Davis called "the nearest approach to revolution" during the entire war…

"... Among them there was hardly a man who could not read and write, and who was not more intelligent than the great mass of American citizens; not one who had not voluntarily abandoned his home with all its tender ties, and thrown away all his possessions, and left father and mother, or wife and children, within the enemy's lines, that he might himself stand by the South in her hour of great peril, and help her to defend her fields and her firesides. And among them all there was not a man who had come forth to fight for slavery."

~~ Thomas Snead

Thomas Sowell

"If slavery were the real issue, then slavery among flesh-and-blood human beings alive today would arouse far more outcry than past slavery among people who are long dead. The difference is that past slavery can be cashed in for political benefits today." Thomas Sowell

Gen. U.S. Grant

"The sole object of this war is to restore the union. Should I
become convinced it has any other object, or that the Government designs
using its soldiers to execute the wishes of the Abolitionists, I pledge you
my honor as a man and a soldier I would
resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side."

Gen W. T. Sherman

"Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of it's roads, houses, and PEOPLE will cripple their military resources….I can make the march, and make Georgia howl." Gen. W.T. Sherman

"Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and
rightfully too, and another year they may beg in vain for their lives.
A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know
the consequences. Many many people, with less pertinacity than the South,
have been wiped out of national existence.
To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and
forbearance; but to the petulant and persistent secessionist, why, death is
mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better."
William Sherman

"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain…. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper."

Writing to his wife in 1862, Sherman said, "We

are in our enemy's country, and I act accordingly...the war will soon

assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least

part of the trouble, but the people."

On August 4, 1863, W.T.Sherman in Camp on Big Black River, Mississippi, wrote to Grant at Vicksburg, "the Amount of burning, stealing and plundering done by our army makes me ashamed of it. I would rather quit the service if I could, because I fear that we are drifting to the worst sort of vandalism....You and I and every commander must go through the war, justly charged with crimes at which we blush."
Federal Official Records ( O.R.) vol. XXIV, pt. III 574

Frederick Douglas wrote.
"There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants, and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the traitors and rebels.

W. H. Councill, colored, an Alabama teacher of an industrial school near Huntsville, writes to J. M. Falkner, Esq., the chief benefactor of the Confederate Home for Alabama,

Although I came up from the other side of the flood and drank of the dregs of the cup of slavery, still I honor those gray haired veterans…. I feel that the slaves got more out of slavery than did their masters, in that the slaves were helped from the lowest state of barbarism to Christian citizenship of the greatest government the world ever knew.

"I have never seen [a former slave] who did not want to be free,
or one who would return to slavery," reflected Washington in his
memoir Up From Slavery. Writing just decades after chattel
slavery had been abolished in the United States, Washington
observed that "the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country,
who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of
American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition,
materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is
true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of
the globe."

From Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington:

"Though I was but little more than a youth during the period of Reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and that things could not remain in the condition that they were in then very long. I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property. "

King Gelele of Africa: Wilmot, explained to King Gelele: "England has been doing her utmost to stop the slave trade in this country. Much money has been spent, and many lives sacrificed to obtain this desirable end, but hitherto without success. I have come to ask you to put an end to this traffic and to enter into some treaty with me."

Gelele refused: "If white men came to buy, why should I not sell?" Wilmot asked how much money he needed. "No money will induce me...I am not like the kings of Lagos and Benin. There are only two kings in Africa, Ashanti and Dahomey: I am King of all the Blacks. Nothing will compensate me for the loss of the slave trade." Gelele also told Burton, "If I cannot sell my captives taken in war, I must kill them, and surely the English would not like that. King Gelele of Africa

Nal Boortz: Groups like the NAACP and the SCLC absolutely NEED issues like the
Confederate flag to raise hell about ... it sustains them. It gives them the
push they need for fund raising. If they didn't have these issues, they would
invent them. This, my friends, is the true never-ending story.

“There are two world histories. One is the official and full of lies, destined to be taught in schools – the other is the secret history, which harbors the true causes and occurrences.” Honore deBalzac

John Field Pankow
''To me, however, the campaign by certain groups to remove all the symbols
and memorials to our Southern past amounts to the same thing...a desecration
of graves. Every flag or monument that is removed, every plaque taken down,
every school or street or bridge that is renamed, is no different from a
broken tombstone. It is wanton and hateful violence directed at the dead who
can no longer defend themselves.'' -- John Field Pankow