We're teachers, and we have a commitment." "Commitment to what-to live and die in this hellhole, when we can leave and live like other people?
Ulysses S. GrantIf men make war in slavish observance of rules, they will fail. No rules will apply to conditions of war as different as those which exist in Europe and America...War is progressive, because all the instruments and elements of war are progressive.
Ulysses S. GrantA military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect.
Ulysses S. GrantIn 1856...I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years.... I therefore voted for James Buchanan as President.
Ulysses S. GrantThe great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
Ulysses S. Grant