The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
We said we were surprised at seeing our old friend, the "geographical
President," again; but we soon found that he reappeared only as the
file-leader of a ragged regiment of kindred scarecrows,--nay, with
others so battered and bedraggled, that they were scarce fit to be the
camp-followers of the soldiery with whom Falstaff refused to march
through Coventry. The sarcasms which Mr. Choate vents against the
Anti-slavery sentiment of the country are so old as to be positively
respectable,--we wish we could say that their vivacity increased with
their years,--and as for his graver indictments, there never was
anything so ancient, unless it be an American lad of eighteen. There
are not a great many of either, but they are made to recur often
enough to produce the impression of numbers. They remind us of the
theatric army, composed always of the same old guard of
supernumeraries and candle-snuffers, and which, by marching round and
round the paper forest in the background, would make six men pass
muster very well for sixty, did not the fatally regular recurrence of
the hero whose cotton armor bunches at the knees, and the other whose
legs insist on the un-Grecian eccentricity of being straight in
profile and crooked in a front view, bring us back to calmer
estimates.
We used the word _indictments_ with design, both as appropriate
to Mr. Choate's profession and exactly descriptive of the thing
itself. For, as in an indictment for murder, in order to close every
loophole of evasion, the prudent attorney affirms that the accused did
the deed with an awfully destructive _to-wit_,--with a knife,
axe, bludgeon, pistol, bootjack, six-pounder, and what not, which were
then and there in the Briarean hands of him the said What's-his-name,
so Mr. Choate represents the Republican Party to have attempted the
assassination of the Constitution with a most remarkable medley of
instruments. He does not, indeed, use the words "Republican Party,"
but it is perfectly clear from the context, as in the case of the
"geographical President," for whom the charges are intended. Out of
tenderness for the artist, let him for whom the garment is intended
put it on, though it may not fit him,--and for our own parts, as
humble members of the Anti-slave-trade, Anti-filibuster, and
Anti-disreputable-things-generally Party, we don our Joseph's coat
(for Mr. Choate could not make one that was not of many colors) with
good-humored serenity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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