We are informed that in  a previous post we incorrectly attributed the notion of “ballots versus bullets” to the late author Bernard Fall. In fact, Lincoln seems to have used this alliterative comparison more than once. Here’s an example:

ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

From Lincoln’s Special Session Message, July 4, 1861. Found in Halsall’s Modern History Sourcebook – a resource we heartily recommend – at Fordham University. Link to Lincoln’s Special Session Message here.

And not a bad sentiment, at that.