Famous Quotes | Disunion and civil war are at...
Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation. Twenty millions in the temperate zone, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, full of vigor, industry, inventive genius, educated, and moral; increasing by immigration rapidly, and, above all, free—all free—will form a confederacy of twenty States scarcely inferior in real power to the unfortunate Union of thirty-three States which we had on the first of November.
- Rutherford Birchard Hayes
Attribution: Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893), U.S. president. Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States, v. II, p. 2, ed. Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 5 vols. (1922-1296), Diary (January 4, 1861). Written in opposition to Sen. John J. Crittenden’s compromise proposals.
Categories: Civil War, Politics, President, Slavery
