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“You done opened my eyes, and I reckon I can go and open some other folks’ eyes my own self. You got yourself a—what’s the Bible word?—A disciple, that’s what it is.”

“Good luck to you, Mr. Blackford,” Lincoln said. “Be the truth’s disciple, not mine. Follow the truth, wherever it may lead you.”

The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change.

“So you’re one of the ones who still say ‘if there be,’ are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but ‘if there are’ has always been good enough for me.”

“I’m an old man.” Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. “The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less.”

Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.

Radicals hire bomb-throwing maniacs. Rich men hire lawyers. They’re more expensive, but they ought to be, because they do more damage.

“You’re a Democrat, aren’t you general?” somebody asked.

“What sensible man isn’t?” Custer returned.

He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead.

He knew what he imagined and what was real were not one and the same. Knowing it and coming to terms with it were not one and the same, either.

“Give me two synonyms for ‘idiots,’” Clemens said, and then gave them himself: “‘Fools’ and ‘Republicans.’”

When a politician, which was what the president of the CSA had long since become, said he was personally in sympathy with something, Jackson had learned, he meant the opposite.

Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less.

“You wouldn’t bring me fifty dollars. You’re too damn old and too damn uppity.”

“I can’t help being old, and I am proud to be uppity,” Douglass said.