The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

One side is not braver than the other. Bullets fly, and men get swept away. They rush into the thick of fighting, and ‘kill’ is written on every face. In a battle the commander who has more men—not afraid to die–drives his opponent off the field and declares a victory.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

The destiny of the land, the nation, the South, the State, the County, was already whirling into the plunge of its precipice, not that the State and the South knew it, because the first seconds of fall always seem like soar.