Ulysses S. Grant

I would not fire a gun to annex territory. I consider it too great a privilege to belong to the United States for us to go around gunning for new territories

With a soldier the flag is paramount

Suffrage once given can never be taken away, and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it

It looks like a political triumph for the south, but it is not. The southern people have nothing to dread more than the political triumph of the men who led them into secession. That triumph was fatal to them in 1860. It would be no less …

In giving the south negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes

the northern man who wanted Union

Military rule would have been just to all, to the negro who wanted freedom

Looking back over the whole policy of reconstruction, it seems to me that the wisest thing would have been to have continued for some time the military rule. Sensible Southern men see now that there was no government so frugal, so just, …

There had to be an end of slavery. Then we were fighting an enemy with whom we could not make a peace. We had to destroy him. No convention, no treaty was possible. Only destruction.

As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.

I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.

It does seem the rule should work both ways

The United States should always be prepared to put down such demonstrations promptly and with severe consequences for the guilty

There is no more beautiful scenery or climate for summer travel than Switzerland presents. The people are industrious and honest, simple and frugal in their habits, and would be very poor with all this, if it were not from the travel …

the possession of this territory would have left the negro 'master of the situation', by enabling him to demand his rights at home on pain of finding them elsewhere.

Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred.

It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training.

Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen have been freed from slavery; we have become possessed of the respect, if not the friendship, of all civilized nations.

Keep the church and the state forever separate.

Let us labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of …

Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

many of our comrades of those days paid the latter price for our preserved Union! Let their heroism and sacrifices be ever green and in our memory. Let not the results of their sacrifices be destroyed. The Union and the free institutions …

Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle.

Complaints are made of this interference by Federal authority; but if said amendment and act do not provide for such interference under the circumstances as above stated, then they are without meaning, force, or effect, and the whole …