That time, however, is unquestionably arrived, and every oppression now exercised on a helpless people depending on our magnanimity and justice for the preservation of their existence impresses a deep stain on the American character.
Albert Beveridge
The Public Record
Albert Jeremiah Beveridge was an American historian and United States senator from Indiana. He was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Era and a biographer of Chief Justice John Marshall and President Abraham Lincoln.
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The Experiment, with its foundations laid on universal Suffrage and an unfettered and licentious Press is of too violent a nature for our excitable People.
No! but snatched from time, To bloom afresh in yonder sphere sublime.
These had power To charm through life and cheer his dying hour.
Genius, and learning, and consummate skill, Moulding each thought, obedient to the will; Affections pure, as e'er warmed human breast, And love, in blessing others, doubly blest; Virtue unspotted, uncorrupted truth, Gentle in age, and…
To Marshall reared--the great, the good, the wise; Born for all ages, honored in all skies; His was the fame to mortals rarely given, Begun on earth, but fixed in aim on heaven.
No man ever bore public honors with so meek a dignity ...
The Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser said that "no man has lived or died in this country, save its father George Washington alone, who united such a warmth of affection for his person, with so deep and unaffected a respect for his…
There was about him so little of 'the insolence of office,' and so much of the benignity of the man, that his presence always produced ... the most delightful impressions.
What a gloom will spread over the nation when he is gone!
In the excitement produced by ardent controversy, gentlemen view the same object through such different media that minds, not infrequently receive therefrom precisely opposite impressions.
The last words Marshall ever uttered as Chief Justice sparkle with vitality and high ideals.
It is doubtful whether history shows more than a few examples of an aged man, ill, disheartened, and knowing that he soon must die, who nevertheless continued his work to the very last with such scrupulous care as did Marshall.
Posterity will assuredly confirm, by its deliberate award, what the present age has approved, as an act of undisputed justice.
As far as I can judge, the Government is weakened, whatever party may prevail.
Those who oppose the violent and rash measures of the Executive (many of them nullifiers, many of them seceders) are generally the bitter enemies of a constitutional government.
They sustain the personal power of the President, but labor incessantly to impair the legitimate powers of the Government.
To men who think as you and I do, the present is gloomy enough; and the future presents no cheering prospect.
In the South, political prejudice is too strong to yield to any degree of merit; and the great body of the nation contains, at least appears to me to contain, too much of the same ingredient.
Lament it as we may, much as it may wound our vanity or our pride, it is still, in the main, true; and will, I fear, so remain....
The word 'State Rights,' as expounded by the resolutions of '98 and the report of '99, construed by our legislature, has a charm against which all reasoning is vain.
In the South, we are so far gone in political metaphysics, that I fear no demonstration can restore us to common sense.
Nothing in their view is to be feared but that bugbear, consolidation; and every exercise of legitimate power is construed into a breach of the Constitution.
Our young men, generally speaking, grow up in the firm belief that liberty depends on construing our Constitution into a league instead of a government; that it has nothing to fear from breaking these United States into numerous petty…
Politicians like Albert Beveridge
