“Not surprisingly, South Carolina acted first. “There is nothing in all the dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees.” wrote the correspondent of the London Times from Charleston. The enmity of Greek for Turk was child’s play “compared to the animosity evinced by the ‘gentry’ of South Carolina for the ‘rabble of the North.’ … The State of South Carolina was,’ I am”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“His captors asked why he, a nonslaveholder, was fighting to uphold slavery. He replied: “I’m fighting because you’re down here.”7”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“More than twice as many Americans lost their lives in one day at Sharpsburg as fell in combat in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American war combined.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“The Civil War was pre-eminently a political war, a war of peoples rather than of professional armies.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“This was a transformation from what the late Isaiah Berlin described as “Negative Liberty” to “Positive Liberty.”4 The idea of negative liberty is perhaps more familiar. It can be defined as the absence of restraint, a freedom from interference by outside authority with individual thought or behavior. A law requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet would be, under this definition, to prevent them from enjoying the freedom to go bareheaded if they wish. Negative liberty, therefore, can be described as freedom from. Positive liberty can best be understood as freedom to . It is not necessarily incompatible with negative liberty, but has a different focus or emphasis. Freedom of the press is generally viewed as a negative liberty—freedom from interference with what a writer writes or a reader reads. But an illiterate person suffers from a denial of positive liberty; he is unable to enjoy the freedom to write or read whatever he chooses, not because some authority prevents him from doings so but because he cannot read or write anything. He suffers not the absence of a negative liberty—freedom from—but of a positive liberty—freedom to read and write. The remedy lies not in removal of restraint but in achievement of the capacity to read and write.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“The casualties at Antietam numbered four times the total suffered by American soldiers at the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944. More than twice as many Americans lost their lives in one day at Sharpsburg as fell in combat in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War combined.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“Lincoln too considered secession the “essence of anarchy.” He branded state sovereignty a “sophism.” “The Union is older than any of the States,” Lincoln asserted, “and, in fact, it created them as States.” The Declaration of Independence transformed the “United Colonies” into the United States; without this union then, there would never have been any “free and independent States.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“By the latter part of 1861 the War Department had taken over from the states the responsibility for feeding, clothing, and arming Union soldiers. But this process was marred by inefficiency, profiteering, and corruption. To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed the fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called “shoddy.” This noun soon became an adjective to describe uniforms that ripped after a few weeks of wear, shoes that fell apart, blankets that disintegrated, and poor workmanship in general on items necessary to equip an army of half a million men and to create its support services within a few short months.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“In cities and factories, the vices of our nature are more fully displayed,” declared James Hammond of South Carolina in 1829, while rural life “promotes a generous hospitality, a high and perfect courtesy, a lofty spirit of independence . . . and all the nobler virtues and heroic traits.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“The truth is, when bullets are whacking against tree-trunks and solid shot are cracking skulls like egg-shells, the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way. Between the physical fear of going forward and the moral fear of turning back, there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“Although per capita income doubled during the half-century, not all sectors of society shared equally in this abundance. While both rich and poor enjoyed rising incomes, their inequality of wealth widened significantly. As the population began to move from farm to city, farmers increasingly specialized in the production of crops for the market rather than for home consumption. The manufacture of cloth, clothing, leather goods, tools, and other products shifted from home to shop and from shop to factory. In the process many women experienced a change in roles from producers to consumers with a consequent transition in status. Some craftsmen suffered debasement of their skills as the division of labor and power-driven machinery eroded the traditional handicraft methods of production and transformed them from self-employed artisans to wage laborers. The resulting potential for class conflict threatened the social fabric of this brave new republic.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
“It began to appear that something larger than a lady’s thimble might be needed to hold the blood shed in this war.”
― James M. McPherson, quote from Battle Cry of Freedom
James M. McPherson
Born place: in Valley City, North Dakota, The United States
Born date October 11, 1936
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“[Riley] slapped his hands to his face and then dropped them as if in surrender. 'I always say the wrong thing around you. Look, can we start over?'
Over?"
Yes. Over. Wipe the board clean.'
But I would have to go back to hating you and not trusting you' I said
Oh, well don't do that.' He paused and chewed his lip. 'Does that mean you like and trust me now?' "
- Riley and Trella”
― Maria V. Snyder, quote from Inside Out
“He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another box held a set of knives and Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingas were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped down the back of his cloak; Teppic picked a slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark.
He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltrops and a set of brass knuckles.
Teppic picked up his hat and checked it's lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Pyramids
“Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.”
― Edward Albee, quote from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“Gotta love a woman that can hand you your own ass.”
― Penelope Douglas, quote from Until You
“He reminded me of a kid in my first-grade class, Mikey. Mikey used to talk about his pencil at Show’n’Tell. It was a fat green pencil with the school’s name and district number stenciled on it. Every kid in the class had an identical pencil. But that didn’t stop Mikey. He would hold it up for us to see, read the stenciled name and number to us, tell us it was a gift from his grandma, or his dad, or his uncle, tell us how green it was, and how fat, tell us how we must be sure to turn the dial on the pencil sharpener to the very biggest hole before attempting to sharpen such a pencil, point out to those who’d just joined us that yes it was a pencil, and yes wasn’t it a fat one, and wasn’t it green, and he’d show it and tell it and tell it and show it till children of frailer constitution started passing out from ennui and the teacher would have to carry him by his belt, telling all the way, to his desk.”
― David James Duncan, quote from The River Why
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