In politics I am growing indifferent – I would like it, if I could now return to my planting and books at home.
Ah, you know my weaknesses – my children and my horses.
I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.
I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.
Two commanders on the same field are always one too many.
Retreat? NO. I propose to attach at daylight and whip them.
I never knew what to do with a paper except to put it in a side pocket or pass it to a clerk who understood it better than I did.
But my later experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticised.
The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front.
The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.
I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.
Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.
I know only two tunes: one of them is ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the other isn’t.
I have never advocated war except as means of peace, so seek peace, but prepare for war. Because war... War never changes. War is like winter and winter is coming.
THE CAUSE of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that “A state half slave and half free cannot exist.” All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.
The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre – what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.
To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war.
The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The Father of his Country, in his Farewell Address, uses this language: Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.