“There never will be anything more interesting than that American Civil War.”

“It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.”

“It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns 'privately with the administration.' That's just a small sliver of Johnson's radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein.”

“England's civil war had ended in a consensus as the English discovered that they hated foreigners more than they hated their own countrymen.”

“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”

“Since the Civil War...the most unruly, the most independent, the most republican of American citizens have been the small farmer.”