1863 Quotes

“Not long ago I was much amused by imagining—what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world—what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“...People's souls make their bodies, just as a snail makes its shell.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“...They were strange and ugly and wrong and horrible, and it all began to come back to him, they were men.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“The next morning the newspapers carried the news that while our meeting was being held there had been staged in Paris, Texas, one of the most awful lynchings and burnings this country has ever witnessed. A Negro had been charged with ravishing and murdering a five-year-old girl. He had been arrested and imprisoned while preparations were made to burn him alive. The local papers issued bulletins detailing the preparations, the schoolchildren had been given a holiday to see a man burned alive, and the railroads ran excursions and brought people of the surrounding country to witness the event, which was in broad daylight with the authorities aiding and abetting this horror. The dispatches told in detail how he had been tortured with red-hot irons searing his flesh for hours before finally the flames were lit which put an end to his agony. They also told how the mob fought over the hot ashes for bones, buttons, and teeth for souvenirs.”
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells

“The situation was fast approaching that of 1863, when Chicago doctors labeled the prison an extermination camp.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“And slept like a dead pig;”
― Charles Kinglsey