To urge the preparation of defence is not to assert the imminence of war. On the contrary, if war were imminent, preparations for defence would be too late.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies... the mystic chords of memory... will swell the chorus of the Union... touched by the better angels of our nature.

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.

Wars are not won by evacuations.