The Presidents of the United States from Washington to Cleveland: Comprising Their Personal and Political History

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Lee and Shepard, 1888 - 547 pages
 

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Page 487 - The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the army of Northern Virginia.
Page 193 - I look back with deepest sorrow, and wish to avert still greater calamities. If I had been left to contend with the Georgia army, I would have raised my corn on one bank of the river, and fought them on the other ; but your people have destroyed my nation. You are a brave man : I rely upon your generosity. You will exact no terms of a conquered people but such as they should accede to : whatevei they may be, it would now be madness and folly to oppose.
Page 91 - Such is the spectacle of injuries and indignities which have been heaped on our country, and such the crisis which its unexampled forbearance and conciliatory efforts have not been able to avert. It might at least have been expected that an enlightened nation...
Page 484 - Mr. President, I accept the commission, with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought in so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and I know that if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men.
Page 431 - All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother — blessings on her memory!
Page 88 - It has become, indeed, sufficiently certain that the commerce of the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the belligerent rights of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies ; but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend that she may the better carry on a commerce with an enemy — a commerce polluted by the forgeries and perjuries...
Page 138 - ... the effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and of the mind; in exploring the interior regions of the union; and in preparing, by scientific researches and surveys, for the further application of our national resources to the internal improvement of our country.
Page 87 - ... a belief that, having resorted to her orders with regret, she was anxious to find an occasion for putting an end to them. Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United States and for its own consistency, the British...
Page 84 - British subjects alone that, under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn from their country, and from everything dear to them; have been dragged on board ships of war of a foreign nation and exposed, under the severities of their discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of their oppressors, and to be the melancholy instruments of taking...

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