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
We have seen to what extremes the party calling itself Conservative has
hinted its willingness to go, under the plea of restored Union, but
with the object of regained power. At Philadelphia, they went as far as
they publicly dared in insinuating that the South would be justified in
another rebellion, and their journals have more than once prompted the
President to violent measures, which would as certainly be his ruin as
they would lead to incalculable public disaster. The President himself
has openly announced something like a design of forcibly suppressing a
Congress elected by the same votes and secured by the same guaranties
that elected him to his place and secure him in it,--a Congress whose
validity he has acknowledged by sending in his messages to it, by
signing its bills, and by drawing his pay under its vote; and yet
thinking men are not to be allowed to doubt the propriety of leaving
the gravest measure that ever yet came up for settlement by the country
to a party and a man so reckless as these have shown themselves to be.
Mr. Johnson talks of the danger of centralization, and repeats the old
despotic fallacy of many tyrants being worse than one,--a fallacy
originally invented, and ever since repeated, as a slur upon democracy,
but which is a palpable absurdity when the people who are to be
tyrannized over have the right of displacing their tyrants every two
years. The true many-headed tyrant is the Mob, that part of the
deliberative body of a nation which Mr. Johnson, with his Southern
notions of popular government, has been vainly seeking, that he might
pay court to it, from the seaboard to St. Louis, but which hardly
exists, we are thankful to say, as a constituent body, in any part of
the Northern States outside the city of New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account