Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860 — John Shaqi
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
"His style is elegant rather than neat; elaborate rather than
finished. It possesses a sparkling vivacity, but is somewhat deficient
in energetic brevity. It is not always easy, for there is more labor
than art; but if the wine has an agreeable _bouquet_, the connoisseur
delights to have it linger. Like young D'Israeli, whose political
position, in some respects, resembles his own, he has occasionally a
tendency to restore declamation, a natural predilection perhaps for
Milesian floridness and hyperbole, and, like Napoleon, a love for
gorgeous paradoxes. But, in general, his words are well-chosen and are
frequently more eloquent than the ideas. His sentences are all
constructed with taste; they have often the brilliancy of Mirabeau,
and the glowing fervor of Fox."
We must notice a few quotations from a very few of Mr. Seward's most
prominent speeches. At Detroit, Oct. 2, 1856, he spoke upon "The
Slaveholding Class," to a mass convention, in which he first argued
that the aggrandizement of the slaveholding class, to the detriment of
the rest of the people of the country, is a perversion of the
Constitution. He then, in a masterly style, gave a sketch of the
condition of the country--showed the organization of the courts, of
Congress, of the departments--all--all entirely in the control of the
slaveholding class--and closed with the subjoined paragraphs:
"Mark, if you please, that thus far I have only shown you the mere
governmental organization of the slaveholding class in the United
States, and pointed out its badges of supremacy, suggestive of
your own debasement and humiliation. Contemplate now the reality
of the power of that class, and the condition to which the cause
of human nature has been reduced. In all the free States, the
slaveholder argues and debates the pretensions of his class, and
even prosecutes his claim for his slave before the delegate of the
Federal Government, with safety and boldness, as he ought. He
exhorts the citizens of the free States to acquiesce, and even
threatens them, in their very homes, with the terrors of disunion,
if that acquiescence is withheld; and he does all this with
safety, as he ought, if it be done at all. He is listened to with
patience, and replied to with decorum, even in his most arrogant
declamations, in the halls of Congress. Through the effective
sympathy of other property classes, the slaveholding power
maintains with entire safety a press and permanent political
organizations in all the free States. On the contrary, if you
except the northern border of Delaware, there is nowhere in any
slaveholding State personal safety for a citizen, even of that
State itself, who questions the rightful national domination of
the slaveholding class. Debate of its pretensions in the halls of
Congress is carried on at the peril of limb and life. A free press
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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