At one time either prior to his inauguration or not long afterward, Lincoln spoke of war with the South and called it “civil war”. I am looking for one (or more) quotes with the source of same in which Lincoln uses that term for an impending (or actual) war between the federal government and the seceding Southern states.
Thank you,
Val
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These are all I could find
GP
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We are in civil war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound — Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it.
–October 5, 1863 Letter to Charles Drake et al
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Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
–November 19, 1863 Gettysburg Address
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It is easy to see that, under the sharp discipline of civil war, the nation is beginning a new life.
–December 8, 1863 Message to Congress
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“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’.”
— March 4, 1861 – Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
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“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”
— October 3, 1863 – Proclamation of Thanksgiving
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“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.” The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, “Meditation on the Divine Will” (September 2, 1862?), pp. 403-404.
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On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
Second Inaugural Address”
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Thank you. I will keep them. But what I really wanted is found in Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”
Notice that he already assumes that what will follow will be a “civil war” and that it will be the fault of the South (his “dissatisfied fellow countrymen). He says that there will be “no conflict” unless they are the aggressors yet we know he had made it clear that any attempt at secession – which is not “conflict” will result in a war. He also states that the South wishes to “destroy the government” which, of course is nonsense. Secession would not have destroyed the federal government though it certainly would have stripped it of much of its means of buying power. This is definitely a warning to the South that if they don’t “get friendly”, they will get war – and they did.
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