Quotes from Jay Winik

But not for Jefferson. "I view cities as pestilent to the morals, the health, and the liberation of man

And where abolitionists preached slavery as a violation against the higher law, Southerners angrily countered with their own version of the deity, that it was sanctioned by the Constitution. In the vortex of this debate, once the battle lines were sharply drawn, moderate ground everywhere became hostage to the passions of the two sides. Reason itself had become suspect; mutual tolerance was seen as treachery. Vitriol overcame accommodation. And the slavery issue would not just fade away.

The ultimate fate of nations is often measured and swayed not by large events, but by tiny ones, small, symbolic gestures that shape men's passions, assuage or incite their fears, and quell or inflame lingering hostilities

When he was a little boy his mother kept him in dresses and long curls; then she dressed him in Scottish regalia. Eventually, at the age of seven, he wore pants—short pants that were part of miniature sailor suits.

Alexis de Tocqueville.

Once, while traveling in the eastern edge of the district, he arrived at a small town late in the afternoon, jumped from the car, headed straight to the hotel, and invited everyone in the bar to have a drink—on him. Only after the bartender began pouring did Roosevelt think to ask where he was: Sharon, Connecticut, not only the wrong district but the wrong state. Undaunted, Roosevelt grinned and paid up; and then proceeded to reuse the story and the joke for years.

c'est moi"—"the state is myself

On the matter of slavery, he reproached but absolved the South of the ultimate blame: "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be judged.

each nation and all peoples must rely on their collective history, their own collective character, and their own collective destiny.

One black man, overcome by emotion, dropped to his knees, prompting the president to conduct a curbside colloquium on the meaning of emancipation. "Don't kneel to me," said the president. "That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.

Tristram Shandy

One young man, upon taking the loyalty oath, was upbraided by his patriotic Southern father: "You have disgraced the family!" The son noted that General Lee advised him to do it. "Oh," the father sighed, "that alters the case. Whatever General Lee says is all right.

Phillis Wheatley

Hunger bred anger, anger bred suspicion, suspicion bred crowds, and crowds bred mobs.

Jefferson) was deeply suspicious of Hamilton's assumption plan (by which the nation would assume responsibility for the states' individual war debts.) He feared this was yet another example of the avaricious hand of the unscrupulous money powers, the sprawling, hydra-headed creature associated with banks, stock markets and devious speculators, especially in New York, Boston, and the City of London, not to mention unrepublican, unAmerican attitudes of all kinds - everything he despised.

Most civil wars, in fact, end quite badly, and history is rife with lessons that how wars end is every bit as crucial as why they start and how they are waged.

Every one I talk to is in favor of putting negroes in the army and that immediately … I think slavery is now gone and what little there is left of it should be rendered as serviceable as possible." For her part, Mary Chesnut lamented, "If we had only freed the negroes at first and put them in the army—that would have trumped [the Union's] trick.

When he was a little boy his mother kept him in dresses and long curls; then she dressed him in Scottish regalia. Eventually, at the age of seven, he wore pants—short pants that were part of miniature sailor suits. Evidently, before age nine he had never taken a bath by himself.

Freeing negroes seems to be the latest Confederate government craze … [but] if we are to lose our negroes we would as soon see Sherman free them as the Confederate government," insisted one Southern woman. "Victory itself would be robbed of its glory if shared with slaves

In a thousand little ways, it seemed as though Grant was fated to fight this civil war. In battle, what galled Grant most was indecision. Once, an aide asked if he thought he was always right. "No!" Grant ripped back. "I am not, but in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out and can do the other thing. But not to decide… may rum everything.

but now it was no longer simply enough to ambush and gun down the enemy. They had to be mutilated and, just as often, scalped. When that was no longer enough, the dead were stripped and castrated. In time, even that was insufficient. Then the victims were beheaded. And even that wasn't enough. So ears were cut off, faces were hacked, bodies were grossly mangled. Soon

To be sure, late that afternoon, Union soldiers drifted into the Confederate camp, and soon knots of blue- and gray-clad men dotted the hills around Appomattox Court House; bullets were indeed replaced by backslaps, the rebel yell with a hearty Southern drawl, war fervor with the first hints of war nostalgia, unbridled hatred with nascent relief, and, by the next day, West Point mini-reunions were even breaking out at the McLean farmhouse. But

James Madison wrote, "each state … is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation then the new Constitution will … be a. federal and not a national constitution.

A king had to die so a republic could live.