Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXIII

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter — Winston Churchill

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other kind that has been tried. –Churchill

The lowest common denominator in America is a lot lower than it used to be. –Clyde Wilson

The rebels have exhibited a most wonderful energy and skill in carrying on their struggle. No people on the face of the earth ever made so hard a fight with such limited means . . . They have displayed a combination of dash and endurance never before equaled in history.   All candid men . . . are free to admit that the final triumph of our national armies will be due only to superiority in numbers. –Henry J. Raymond, staunch Republican editor of the New York Times

Strength of character reinforced Lee’s intelligence and bearing to give him a force of presence that enabled him to exert a remarkable influence on his soldiers and all others who came in contact with him. From a single conference with him during the war, the eminent British general Viscount Wolseley wrote: “I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man of different and finer metal than all other men.”   –Charles P. Roland

The South is by a long way the most simply and sincerely a religious country than I was ever in. It is a country in which religion is a very large factor in life, and God is very real and personal. –English traveler, 1910

Virginia is a pirate ship, and John Brown sails the sea a Lord High Admiral of the Almighty with His commission to sink every pirate he meets on God’s ocean.   –Abolitionist Wendell Phillips

One analysis of the Army’s officer corps in the early 1970s estimated that four out of five of its active generals were born in small southern towns.   –Charles P. Roland

The past is never dead. It is not even past.     –Faulkner

If only Longstreet had . . . .     –O. Henry

Clyde Wilson

Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he was the editor of the multivolume The Papers of John C. Calhoun. He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews and is co-publisher of www.shotwellpublishing.com, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books.

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