As he lay in his coffin he was no longer the arch rebel, leading a combine of buccaneers and insurgents, which the Republican orators and newspapers had depicted him, but the brave old apostle of freedom who had done more than all others to make the issues upon which a militant and triumphant party had risen to power.
Watterson reflects on the transformation of public perception of Greeley after his death, highlighting his legacy as a champion of freedom.
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But he can hardly be called a sentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment—gush and gammon—in the proposed League of Nations.
O Liberty,” cried Madame Roland, “how many crimes are committed in thy name!” “O Churchism,” may I not say, “how much nonsense is trolled off in thy name!
But my face in the glass I’ll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow— That this worn-out old stuff which is thread-bare to-day Shall become everlasting to-morrow.
Socialism, disappointed of its Utopia, may then repeat the familiar lesson and reproduce the man-on-horseback, or the world may drop into another abyss, and, after the ensuing “dark ages,” like those that swallowed Babylon and Tyre, Greece…
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