Four Years in the Army of the Potomac: A Soldier's Recollections

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Tyne, 1881 - United States - 246 pages

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Page 215 - O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead.
Page 36 - I shall have the most solemn one to " preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Page 113 - 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 here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Page 36 - In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.
Page 20 - I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
Page 214 - O Captain! My Captain! O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain!
Page 175 - Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South, The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth; Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster. Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster, The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Were beating like prisoners assaulting...
Page 18 - That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that, as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law...
Page 57 - Far away in the cot on the mountain. His musket falls slack — his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep — For their mother — may Heaven defend her...
Page 166 - I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of...

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