The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
And this dreaded spectre, though a beneficent angel with healing on
his wings in truth, will push yet many traitorous or cowardly
sycophants from the stools they disgrace, and substitute in their
stead men who will quiet Agitation by Justice. Let the men of Kansas
remember that a yet greater trust than that of providing for their
own interests and rights is in their hands. The battle they are to
fight in this quarrel is for the whole North, for the whole country,
for the world. Let them address themselves unto it with calmness,
with prudence, with watchfulness, with courage. They are beset on
every side by crafty and desperate enemies. Greedy land-jobbers, in
haste to be rich, will try to persuade them that not to be innocent
is to be wise. Timid timeservers will urge a submission which
promises peace, though it be but a solitude that is called so.
Rampant Pro-slavery will exalt its horn against Righteousness and
try again the virtue of ruffianism to prevail against civilization.
The barbarians will hang anew upon the borders, ready to complete
the conquest they began so well. And above all, a majority of the men
who are to pass upon the votes are the creatures of the
Administration, who know, by the example of their predecessors, that
the suspicion of honesty will be fatal to all their hopes of
preferment, and that they can purchase reward only by procuring,
_quocunque modo_, the acceptance of the proposition of Congress.
But still the power is in the hands of the Free-State men, if they
choose to put it forth. Let them organize such a scrutiny everywhere,
that fraud and violence cannot escape detection and exposure. Let
them observe most rigidly all the technical rules imposed upon the
electors, that no vote may be lost. Let them come to the polls by
thousands, and trample under their feet the shabby bribe for which
they are asked to trade away their independence and their virtue.
Let them be thus faithful, and never be weary of maintaining the
Agitation, which is proved, by the very dread their enemies have of
it, to be the way to their victory. Thus they will be sure to triumph,
conquering their right to create their own government, and erect a
free commonwealth on the ruins of the tyranny they have overthrown.
And Kansas, at no distant period, will be welcomed by her Free
Sisters to her place among them, with no stain of bribes in her hands,
and with no soil of meanness upon her garments. And then the
"peace" and "prosperity," which President Buchanan saw in vision on
the eve of May-day, will indeed prevail and be established, while
the blackness of infamy will brood forever over the memory of the
magistrate who used the highest office of the Republic to perpetuate
the wrongs of the Slave by the sacrifice of the rights of the Citizen.
LITERARY NOTICES.
_Library of Old Authors.--Works of John Webster_. London: John
Russell Smith. 1856-57.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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