Shakspere, Personal RecollectionsJoyce, John A. (John Alexander)
General
Shakspere, Personal Recollections
Joyce, John A. (John Alexander)
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Fiction
and heard him hurl these javelins of defiant patriotic eloquence against
the brazen brutality of British judicial tyranny:
"When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade
shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed
their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their
country and virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name
may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency
on the destruction of this perfidious Government, which upholds its
dominion by blasphemy of the Most High.
"The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors
which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through
the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are
bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven!
"Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no one who knows my motives
dares now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them.
Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain
uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my
character and memory. When my country shall take her place among the
nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be
written."
Again, in my peripatetic tour of nations, seeking and aiding the hosts of
Liberty, I stood with
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON,
the greatest Irish-American citizen, soldier and President, behind the
cotton bales and swamps of New Orleans, and on the 8th of January, 1815, I
saw him hurl more than two thousand "Red Coats" into eternity, with only a
loss of seven men, three killed and four wounded.
Kentucky and Tennessee "Bushwhackers," with a lot of New Orleans
shopkeepers, armed with squirrel rifles, killed and defeated General
Pakenham, and the veteran troops of John Bull, in their raids over the
globe for land, loot and human blood.
And still moving across the Gulf of Mexico, to Vera Cruz; and by land to
Buena Vista, with
SCOTT AND TAYLOR,
I heard the scream of the American eagle as it swooped down on the tyrant
troops of Santa Ana, and with the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze,
beheld the United States soldiers charge the castellated heights of
Chapultepec, and the next day, the 14th of September, 1847, saw General
Scott plant his colors over the "National Palace," with his conquering army
marching in glory through the city and halls of the Montezumas.
Yet, with all the woes of Mexico, I saw it in after years, rise out of the
toils of foreign monarchy, when General Juarez, the native liberator,
captured and killed the Archduke Maximilian, the representative of the
Little Napoleon of France.
The "Monroe Doctrine" triumphed in the death gurgle of Maximilian.
_Sic semper tyrannis!_
Treason to tyrants is truth to the people!
Off with the heads of Charles the First, Louis the Sixteenth and
Robespierre!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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