Open Thread Thursday
What is your favorite Civil War Era quote?
First, let me just say thank you for your patience. I haven’t had the opportunity to post much this month as I continue to work feverishly to wrap up my manuscript on the life and memory of Col. Robert Gould Shaw. I am pleased to share that I am just about finished. Another week or so of hunting down references, formatting the endnotes, and writing the introduction and the manuscript will be ready for peer review.
Since I don’t have much time and I haven’t done one in recent weeks, I thought it would fun to do another open thread post. Today I want you to think about your favorite quote from the Civil War era.
I know what you are thinking. The period is so incredibly rich with quotable moments from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to a common soldier’s reflections on his first battle. How do I choose?
Take some time to think about this one.
I came across this excerpt from a speech Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner delivered in 1866 at the beginning of Reconstruction in Manisha Sinhas brand new book, The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.
According to the best testimony now, the population of the earth—embracing Caucasians, Mongolians, Malays, Africans, and Americans—is about thirteen hundred millions, of whom only three hundred and seventy five millions are ‘white men,’ or less than one-fourth, so that, in claiming exclusive rights for ‘white men,’ you degrade nearly three-quarters of the Human Family, made in the ‘image of God,’ and declared to be ‘one blood, while you sanction a Caste offensive to religion, an Oligarchy inconsistent with Republican Government, and a Monopoly which has the whole world as its footstool.
I am embarassed to admit that this was the first time I read it. One of the many things that I respect about Sumner is the fact that he was just as defiant after the vicious beating he took in the U.S. senate on May 22, 1856 as he was before. Sumner places the fundamental question of natural and civil rights within a broad international context and he also attempts to undercut a lingering belief in a natural racial hierarchy based on religion.
The concerns and fears expressed by Sumner here are very much our own today.
I look forward to reading your favorite Civil War era quote.
Finally, a photograph of everyone’s favorite dog. You will notice that Otis is wearing a cone. The big guy recently underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate and gastroplexy. He is doing just fine and no longer wearing the cone.
Have a great day.
Here are two quotes, one by and one about a Virginian who remained loyal to the U.S.Army, Philip St. George Cooke (1809–1895). From the Encyclopedia of Virginia:
“When the Civil War began, Cooke was one of the Regular Army’s top cavalrymen and he chose to stay with the Union, writing, ‘I owe Virginia little; my country much.’ It was a decision that caused a long estrangement from his son, John Rogers Cooke (1833–1891), and a rift with his son-in-law, the future Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart.”
“Secession divided Cooke’s family. One son-in-law commanded a New York regiment in the Union army, but the other two served the Confederacy. Cooke’s son, John Rogers Cooke, resigned his commission in the United States Army and late in 1862 became a Confederate brigadier general. Of Cooke’s loyalty to the Union J. E. B. Stuart wrote, with mortification, ‘He will regret it but once & that will be continually.’”
To my mind, Cooke may have sorrowed over his rebel son and son-in-law, but I do not believe he ever regretted his choice to remain loyal to the United States. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/cooke-philip-st-george-1809-1895/
"I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855