Historical voices

They thought the conventions were political bluster; the secession itself a piece of bravado.

The mistake made by Northern statesmen, through the whole winter of 1860, was in not believing the South to be in earnest.

The time will come when the Yankees will learn to regret their present course.

You can work your will upon us; but men do not forget things seared into their hearts.

Our people feel that you are cruelly and wantonly trifling with us—yes, insulting us; that, having conquered, you have not the magnanimity of brave conquerors, but are bent upon heaping humiliation on your unfortunate victims.

The war over, you now maintain that we are out, and must stay out till you subject us to fresh humiliations.

Then, having refused to let us out, you slam the door in our faces and won’t let us in.

You thought differently; went to war about it, and established by numbers what you could not by argument.

It all resolves itself back into this: we honestly thought we had a right to go out.

We’ve been guilty of a great crime; we have reason to be thankful that we are treated as leniently as we are, and it becomes us to keep quiet, and hope for the best.

There were few boasts as to what the South would do, or how heartily that true Southern man, the President, would sustain them; there was more tendency to complain that they had been whipped for trying to go out, and that now the door was…

Traveling wholly by land from Washington to New Orleans, taking the trip leisurely, with frequent stoppages and constant intercourse with the people, I had abundant opportunities for discovering at once the marked change in the tone of…

It is the oath which the laws require and which the higher obligations of public safety demand, and it is the oath, facing which most of the Southern States have sent none who could take it without perjury.

He couldn’t understand why a State good enough to furnish the country a President wasn’t good enough to furnish the House members.

It has spilled over the main aisle till half the Democratic seats are occupied with its surplus, and the forlorn hope, that still flies the banner of the dead party, is crowded into the extreme left.

Was the victory to be now thrown away, that later times might witness the contest over again?

The people have generally more education and refinement than in other parts of the State; their public improvements are better, and their country is every way more attractive.

The “Radicals of the North” were as odious as in the old days of the war; and the tone of the newspapers was as fierce as when they were wandering from point to point in front of the steadily advancing National armies.

They would have received white troops, not indeed with rejoicing, but with kindness, satisfaction, and respect; but when they saw their own slaves freed, armed, and put on guard over them, they treated all hope of Federal magnanimity or…

Their hearts sickened under what they deemed an outrageous exercise of tyranny.

All felt the quartering of negro guards among them to be a deliberate, wanton, cruel act of insult and oppression.

Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by scores and hundreds and thousands…

She should walk erect, assert her rights, and demand their recognition!

Leading Mississippians, however, even of the ultra type, denounced it as impracticable.