Our Presidents and how we make themMcClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
History
Our Presidents and how we make them
McClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
Presidents -- United States -- Election
After the most solemn and unanimous pledge of both Houses of Congress
to prosecute the war exclusively for the maintenance of the
Government and the preservation of the Union under the Constitution,
it has repeatedly violated that most sacred pledge under which alone
was rallied that noble volunteer army which carried our flag to
victory. Instead of restoring the Union, it has, so far as in its
power, dissolved it, and subjected ten States, in the time of profound
peace, to military despotism and negro supremacy. It has nullified
there the right of trial by jury; it has abolished the _habeas
corpus_, that most sacred writ of liberty; it has overthrown the
freedom of speech and the press; it has substituted arbitrary seizures
and arrests, and military trials and secret star-chamber inquisitions
for the constitutional tribunals; it has disregarded, in time of
peace, the right of the people to be free from searches and seizures;
it has entered the post and telegraph offices, and even the private
rooms of individuals, and seized their private papers and letters
without any specific charge or notice or affidavit, as required by the
organic law; it has converted the American Capitol into a bastile; it
has established a system of spies and official espionage to which no
constitutional monarchy of Europe would now dare to resort; it has
abolished the right of appeal, on important constitutional questions,
to the supreme judicial tribunals, and threatened to curtail or
destroy its original jurisdiction, which is irrevocably vested by the
Constitution, while the learned Chief Justice has been subjected to
the most atrocious calumnies, merely because he would not prostitute
his high office to the support of the false and partisan charges
preferred against the President. Its corruption and extravagance have
exceeded anything known in history, and, by its frauds and monopolies,
it has nearly doubled the burden of the debt created by the war. It
has stripped the President of his constitutional power of appointment,
even of his own Cabinet. Under its repeated assaults the pillars
of the Government are rocking on their base, and should it succeed
in November next and inaugurate its President, we will meet, as a
subjected and conquered people, amid the ruins of liberty and the
scattered fragments of the Constitution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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