Great Debates in American History: The Civil War

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Marion Mills Miller
Current Literature Publishing Company, 1913 - History
This is a compilation of the most significant debates that have taken place in US history as conducted by the country's most brilliant statesmen. It includes introductory essays by many academics and is intended for any one with an interest in politics and the US.
 

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Page 218 - ... that on the first day of january in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the united states shall be then thenceforward and forever free...
Page 214 - If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
Page 19 - It follows from these views that no state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union ; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void ; and that acts of violence within any state or states against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
Page 279 - Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
Page 278 - Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
Page 22 - Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.
Page 278 - Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
Page 18 - I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
Page 215 - What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet ! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States?
Page 13 - I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of...