Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The madness that would set aside provisions so essentially just,
whose only error is inadequacy, has broken forth naturally in brutal
utterance, where he has charged persons by name with seeking his life,
and has stimulated a mob against them. It is difficult to surpass the
criminality of this act. The violence of the President has provoked
violence. His words were dragon’s teeth, which have sprung up armed
men. Witness Memphis; witness New Orleans. Who can doubt that the
President is author of these tragedies? Charles the Ninth of France
was not more completely author of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
than Andrew Johnson is author of the recent massacres now crying out
for judgment. History records that the guilty king was pursued in the
silence of night by the imploring voices of murdered men, mingled with
curses and imprecations, while ghosts stalked through his chamber,
until he sweated blood from every pore; and when he came to die, his
soul, wrung with the tortures of remorse, stammered out, “Ah, nurse,
my good nurse! what blood! what murders! Oh, what bad counsels I
followed! Lord God, pardon me! have mercy on me!” Like causes produce
like effects. The blood at Memphis and New Orleans must cry out until
heard, and a guilty President may suffer the retribution which followed
a guilty king.
The evil he has done already is on such a scale that it is impossible
to measure it, unless as you measure an arc of the globe. I doubt
if in all history there is any ruler who in the same brief space of
time has done so much. There have been kings and emperors, proconsuls
and satraps, who have exercised tyrannical power; but facilities of
communication now lend swiftness and extension to all evil influences,
so that the President is able to do in a year what in other days would
have taken a life. Nor is the evil confined to any narrow spot. It is
coextensive with the Republic. Next to Jefferson Davis stands Andrew
Johnson as its worst enemy. The whole country has suffered; but the
Rebel region has suffered most. He should have sent peace; instead, he
sent a sword. Behold the consequences!
In support of a cruel “policy” he has not hesitated to use his
enormous patronage. President Lincoln said, familiarly, that, as
the people had continued him in office, he supposed they meant that
others should be continued also; and he refused to make removals. But
President Johnson announces “rotation in office”; and then, warming in
anger against all failing to sustain his “policy,” he roars that he
will “kick them out.” Men appointed by the martyred Lincoln are to be
“kicked out” by the successor, while he pretends to sustain the policy
of the martyr. The language of the President is most suggestive. He
“kicks” the friends of his well-loved predecessor; and he also “kicks”
the careful counsel of that well-loved predecessor, that we must “build
up from the sound materials.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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