The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V: Political EssaysLowell, James Russell
History
The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V: Political Essays
Lowell, James Russell
United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1869
hands, so long as it is prudent for us to keep it there; and we are
justified, not in doing simply what we will with our own, but what is
best to be done. The great danger in the present posture of affairs
seems to be lest the influence which in Mr. Lincoln's case was inherent
in the occasion and the man should have held over in the popular mind
as if it were entailed upon the office. To our minds more is to be
apprehended in such a conjuncture from the weakness than from the
strength of the President's character.
There is another topic which we feel obliged to comment on, regretting
deeply, as we do, that the President has given us occasion for it, and
believing, as we would fain do, that his own better judgment will lead
him to abstain from it in the future. He has most unfortunately
permitted himself to assume a sectional ground. Geography is learned to
little purpose in Tennessee, if it does not teach that the Northeast as
well as the Southwest is an integral and necessary part of the United
States. By the very necessity of his high office, a President becomes
an American, whose concern is with the outward boundaries of his
country, and not its internal subdivisions. One great object of the
war, we had supposed, was to abolish all fallacies of sectional
distinction in a patriotism that could embrace something wider than a
township, a county, or even a State. But Mr. Johnson has chosen to
revive the paltry party-cries from before that deluge which we hoped
had washed everything clean, and to talk of treason at both ends of the
Union, as if there were no difference between men who attempted the
life of their country, and those who differ from him in their judgment
of what is best for her future safety and greatness. We have heard
enough of New England radicalism, as if that part of the country where
there is the most education and the greatest accumulation of property
in the hands of the most holders were the most likely to be carried
away by what are called agrarian theories. All that New England and the
West demand is that America should be American; that every relic of a
barbarism more archaic than any institution of the Old World should be
absolutely and irrecoverably destroyed; that there should be no longer
two peoples here, but one, homogeneous and powerful by a sympathy in
idea. Does Mr. Johnson desire anything more? Does he, alas! desire
anything less? If so, it may be the worse for his future fame, but it
will not and cannot hinder the irresistible march of that national
instinct which forced us into war, brought us out of it victorious, and
will not now be cheated of its fruits. If we may trust those who have
studied the matter, it is moderate to say that more than half the
entire population of the Free States is of New England descent, much
more than half the native population. It is by the votes of these men
that Mr. Johnson holds his office; it was as the exponent of their
convictions of duty and policy that he was chosen to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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