I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

Wars are not all evil, they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!

War is cruel and you cannot refine it.

If nominated, I won't run; If elected, I won't serve.

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.