Us Civil War Quotes

“The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union's 'colored troops,' a flailing Confederacy began considering an attempt to recruit blacks into its army. But in the nineteenth century, the idea of the soldier was heavily entwined with the notion of masculinity and citizenship. How could an army constituted to defend slavery, with all of its assumptions about black inferiority, turn around and declare that blacks were worthy of being invited into Confederate ranks? As it happened, they could not. 'The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of our revolution,' observed Georgia politician Howell Cobb. 'And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.' There could be no win for white supremacy here. If blacks proved to be the cowards that 'the whole theory of slavery' painted them as, the battle would be lost. But much worse, should they fight effectively--and prove themselves capable of 'good Negro government'--then the larger war could never be won.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“Getting history right is pretty much the most important thing a citizen can do in a nation at war with itself--as ours was. And is.”
― Brooke Gladstone

“We have heard so many different rumors, about different subjects, that we are rather slow to believe anything we don't see. (Money especially.)”
― James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War Letters from the Front

“The American people, as a nation, knew not what they were fighting for till recently, and many have different opinions now as to the ends and results of the contest. But there is but two results possible, one is slavery and poverty and the other is liberty and prosperity.”
― James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War Letters from the Front

“If a person were to ask me what I saw South, I should tell him stink weed, sand, rattlesnakes, and alligators. To tell the honest truth, our boys out on picket look sharper for snakes than they do for rebels.”
― James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War Letters from the Front

“If you wish to know hell before your time,' a Confederate officer wrote, 'go to Saint Simons Island and be hunted for ten days' by colored troops.”
― Thomas C. Barnwell Jr., Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge 1861-1956