The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Of President Lincoln's reelection no doubt can be entertained, whether
we judge of the issue by the condition of the country, or by the
sentiments that should animate the great majority of the people, and by
which, we are convinced, that majority is animated. The Union candidate,
no matter what his name or antecedents, should be elected by a majority
so great as to "coerce" the turbulent portion of the Democracy into
submission to the laws of the land, and into respect for the popular
will, the last thing for which Democrats have any respect. Had the Union
National Convention seen fit to place a new man in nomination, it would
have been the duty of the voters to support him with all the means
honestly at their command; but we must say that there is a peculiar
obligation upon Americans to reelect Mr. Lincoln, and to reelect him by
a vote that should surprise even the most sanguine and hopeful of his
friends. The war from which the nation, and the whole world, have been
made to suffer so much, and from the effects of which mankind will be
long in recovering, was made because of Mr. Lincoln's election to the
Presidency. The North was to be punished for having had the audacity to
elect him even when the Democracy were divided, and the success of the
Republican candidate was a thing of course. He, a mere man of the
people, should never become _President of the United States_! The most
good-natured of men, it is known that his success made him an object of
personal aversion to the Southern leaders. They did their worst to
prevent his becoming President of the Republic, and in that way they
wronged and insulted the people far more than they wronged and insulted
the man whom the people had elected to the highest post in the land; and
the people are bound, by way of vindicating their dignity and
establishing their power, to make Mr. Lincoln President of the _United_
States, to compel the acknowledgment of his legal right to be the chief
magistrate of the nation as unreservedly, from South Carolina as from
Massachusetts. His authority should be admitted as fully in Virginia as
it is in New York, in Georgia and Alabama as in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
This can follow only from his reelection; and it can follow only from
his reelection by a decisive majority. That insolent spirit which led
the South to become so easy a prey to the Secession faction, when not a
tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly,
emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished,
by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the
enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful
authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the
requirements of the Constitution, and who entertained no more intention
of interfering with the constitutional rights of the South than he
thought of instituting a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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