The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
What men, too, did not Washington and Adams call around them in the
Cabinet!--how representative of great ideas! how historical! how
immortal! How many of our readers can name the names of their
successors of the present day? Inflated obscurities, bloated
insignificances, who knows or cares whence they came or what they are?
We know whose bidding they were appointed to obey, and what manner of
work they are ready to perform. And shall we dare extend our profane
comparisons even higher than the Cabinet? Shall we bring the shadowy
majesty of Washington's august idea alongside the microscopic
realities of to-day? Let us be more merciful, and take our departure
from the middle term between the Old and the New, occupied by Andrew
Jackson, whose iron will and doggedness of purpose give definite
character, if not awful dignity, to his image. In his time, the Slave
Power, though always the secret spring which set events in motion,
began to let its workings be seen more openly than ever before. And
from his time forward, what a graduated line of still diminishing
shadows have glided successively through the portals of the White
House! From Van Buren to Tyler, from Tyler to Polk, from Polk to
Fillmore, from Fillmore to Pierce! "Fine by degrees and beautifully
less," until it at last reached the vanishing point!
The baleful influence thus ever shed by Slavery on our national
history and our public men has not yet spent its malignant forces. It
has, indeed, reached a height which a few years ago it was thought the
wildest fanaticism to predict; but its fatal power will not be stayed
in the mid-sweep of its career. The Ordinance of 1787 torn to shreds
and scattered to the winds,--the line drawn in 1820, which the
slaveholders plighted their faith Slavery should never overstep,
insolently as well as infamously obliterated,--Slavery presiding in
the Cabinet, seated on the Supreme Bench, absolute in the halls of
Congress,--no man can say what shape its next aggression may not take
to itself. A direct attack on the freedom of the press and the liberty
of speech at the North, where alone either exists, were no more
incredible than the later insolences of its tyranny. The battle not
yet over in Kansas, for the compulsory establishment of Slavery there
by the interposition of the Federal arm, will be renewed in every
Territory as it is ripening into a State. Already warning voices are
heard in the air, presaging such a conflict in Oregon. Parasites
everywhere instinctively feel that a zeal for the establishment of
Slavery where it has been abolished, or its introduction where it had
been prohibited, is the highest recommendation to the Executive favor.
The rehabilitation of the African slave-trade is seriously proposed
and will be furiously urged, and nothing can hinder its accomplishment
but its interference with the domestic manufactures of the breeding
Slave States. The pirate Walker is already mustering his forces for
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