I can sustain the memory of Fort Fisher if he and his present associates can sustain him in shedding the blood of a woman tried by a military commission and convicted, in my judgment, without sufficient evidence!
Adlai Stevenson
The Public Record
American politician (1835–1914); Vice President of the United States from 1893 to 1897
gutenberg.org
I repel with scorn and contempt any utterance of that sort from any man, whether he be the hero of Fort Fisher, not taken, or of Fort Fisher, taken!
In that dreary, cold, dark region of space, which is only known to be less than infinite by the evidences of creations elsewhere, the Great Author of celestial mechanism has left the chaos which was in the beginning.
Not upon common fame; not upon the price of gold in New York, or upon any question of finance; not upon newspaper rumor; not upon any views of party policy; you are to try them upon the evidence offered here and nothing else, by the…
An hour ago you beheld a goose stuffed with sage; you now behold a sage stuffed with goose!
We don't wear Sunday clothes, General Fry, like you do down in Danville, but just live in our plain way in our log cabins, and eat our hoe-cake, and say our prayers, but if there is anything on God's earth that we do love, it is the truth.
It is an outrage, Colonel Woolford, to attempt to deceive these people by such statements.
I knew General Lee, I served with him in Mexico, and although we fought on different sides in the last war, I always respected him as a brave soldier.
We don't put on style and wear store clothes like you big folks down about Danville, but we live in our plain way, wear our home-spun and eat our hog and hominy; but if there is anything on earth that these people do love, it is the truth.
This same magnanimous Republican party took him prisoner, tried him by a drumhead court-martial, and shot him down like a mad dog after he had surrendered up his sword.
You all remember Stonewall Jackson, one of the grandest men God ever made.
It was without a parallel in history, and as a matter of simple gratitude, the Republican party was entitled to the support of the entire Southern people for such magnanimity.