Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
From “The Creole Village.”
The Almighty Dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.
I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.
To the victors belong the spoils of the enemy.
The upper ten thousand of the city.
The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
The American idea,… a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.
We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.
Peace at any price; peace and union.
An Old-Line Whig is one who takes his whiskey regularly, and votes the Democratic ticket occasionally.
The glittering and sounding generalities of natural right, which make up the Declaration of Independence.
Cotton is King; or, Slavery in the Light of Political Economy. 1855.
No, sir, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king. Until lately the Bank of England was king, but she tried to put her screws as usual, the fall before last, upon the cotton-crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered.
In all social systems there must be a class to do the mean duties, to perform the drudgery of life; that is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, refinement, and civilization. It constitutes the very mudsills of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air as to build either the one or the other except on the mudsills. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand—a race inferior to herself, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for the purpose and call them slaves. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; it is a word discarded now by ears polite; but I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal.
A self-made man? Yes,—and worships his creator.
Boston State-House is the hub of the Solar System.
If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.
To the Confederate Major Cary, who claimed the rendition of three fugitive slaves:
I retain these negroes as contraband of war, and have set them to work inside the fortress.
See, there is Jackson, standing like a stone wall!
Go in anywhere, Colonel! You’ll find lovely fighting along the whole line.
A star for every State, and a State for every star.
To Gen. S. B. Buckner, Fort Donelson, 16 February, 1862.
No other terms than unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.
Let us have peace.
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effectual as their strict construction.
From the decision in Texas v. White, 7 Wallace, 725.
The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.
The way to resumption is to resume.
I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen. North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them.