1863 Quotes

One of the middle ones in the flock, I was born on July 24, 1857, in the small Jutland town of Fredericia. In 1863, my father was transferred to Randers, another Jutland town, where a year later, at the age of six, I experienced the invasion of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. ~ Henrik Pontoppidan

Let us cross the river to the other side and rest beneath the shade of the trees.
[Stonwall Jackson just before passing into eternity in 1863.] ~ Thomas Jackson

ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND. 1863-1914. LLIE LIGHTLY UPON HIM EARTH, THO' HE / LAID MANY A HEAVY BURDEN UPON THEE. ~ John Green

Lady Gough's Book of Etiquette, published in 1863, established some of the social commandments of the times: one must avoid, for example, the intolerable proximity of male and female authors on library shelves. Books could only stand together if the authors were married, such as in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Finally, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as Thanksgiving: a day to solemnly acknowledge the sacrifices made for the Union ... Shopping was part of the American Dream, too. So in 1939, at the urging of merchants, FDR moved Thanksgiving ahead a week, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. And there it has remained, a day of national gluttony, retail pageantry, TV football, and remembrance of the Pilgrims, a folk so austere that they regarded Christmas as a corrupt Papist holiday. ~ Tony Horwitz

...They were strange and ugly and wrong and horrible, and it all began to come back to him, they were men. ~ Charles Kingsley

On January 9, 1863, nine days after Lincoln ended slavery by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, ~ Doug Most

At one point, the entire wagon train came to a halt when the soldiers and officers on horseback fell asleep in their saddles.
Few words were spoken between the boys on the journey; their thoughts were filled with the voices of those around them. The wounded men sang a song of sorrow to the rhythm of the rain. It was a never-ending song, for when one man died there was another who took his place in the chorus of the suffering. The song served as a cadence for the five thousand who marched by their side.
(The Confederate retreat from Gettysburg. July 4, 1863)
Excerpt From: Sheila W. Slavich. "Jumpin' the Rails!." XlibrisUS, 2016-03-16T04:00:00+00:00. iBooks.
This material is protected by copyright. ~ Sheila W Slavich

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining - what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world - what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared two Thanksgivings. One was held in August. The second, held in November, was to give thanks for the nation's blessings. This fall celebration caught on and has been a tradition ever since. ~ Linda Bozzo

What's wrong with my clothing?' she asked, glancing down the length of her body, clothed in a tank top and shorts.
He helped her up, unable to stifle a grin. 'Let's just say women do not dress like that in 1863. ~ Suzannah Daniels

The words of an old hymn come to mind: But we make His love too narrow By false limits of our own; And we magnify His strictness With a zeal He will not own. For the love of God is broader Than the measure of the mind; And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind. -- - Frederick William Faber 1814-1863 ~ Ken Wilson

There was one vampire, however, who refused to leave ... who believed that the dream of a nation of immortals was still within reach - so long as Abraham Lincoln was dead. His name was John Wilkes Booth. FIG.3E - JOHN WILKES BOOTH (SEATED) POSES FOR A PORTRAIT WITH CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS IN RICHMOND, CIRCA 1863. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg address, November 19, 1863 ~ Abraham Lincoln

What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew. The war was about a new birth of freedom. ~ Bruce Catton

….two slate-colored gravestones settled at a slant into the lower corner of the field beside the lane. She could not read the names engraved on them, but she knew what they were. Joseph Watson, 1820-1891, and James Watson, son of Joseph and Hannah Watson, 1844-1863. The grave of Hannah Watson lay beside her husband's and because she had died last, she had no marker, unless the pine tree growing there might count as one. To-morrow two men would drive up and leave a basket of flowers and a flag for Joseph because he had fought in the Civil War, and for James because he had died on his way home from it, but they would not have anything for Hannah because she had only identified her son James one hot summer day on the platform of North Derwich Station, and raised all the food her husband ate for twenty years as he sat in a chair in her kitchen, and done washings for Mrs. Hale to buy monuments for them at the end. But the flowers would die in the boxes; even if Jen found time to go down and set out the pansy plants in the ground, stray cows were sure to eat them off before the summer was over; and the Forrest children would take the flags to play with. Nothing would interfere with the tree. ~ Gladys Hasty Carroll

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power. ... But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. ("A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer." Proclamation March 30, 1863) ~ Abraham Lincoln

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, on January 1, 1863, Abbott wrote from the front to his aunt to explain that [t]he president's proclamation is of course received with universal disgust, particularly the part which enjoins officers to see that it is carried out. You may be sure that we shan't see to any thing of the kind, having decidedly too much reverence for the constitution. ~ Louis Menand

THE SUMMER OF 1863 marked a crucial transformation in the Union war effort - the organization and deployment of black regiments that would eventually amount to 180,000 soldiers, a substantial proportion of eligible black males. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God. ~ Mark Twain

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA ~ Abraham Lincoln

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington's mother that had been stored away for safekeeping. ~ David McCullough