# Quote — Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism

> Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the country of “democracy” – in the United States of North America. Although the question was not the abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of property in Negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way. The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860, decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose in a slave-owners’ insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes between so-called “high authorities.” The judge of the Supreme Court decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that end to the military authorities.

- Author: [Leon Trotsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky.md)
- Book: [Terrorism and Communism](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Terrorism_and_Communism_(1920)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/let-us-now

## More from this book

> In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.

p. 55 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/in-a-revolutionary.md)

> Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.

p. 153 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/repression-for-the.md)

> It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.

p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/it-could-and.md)