Faithful men who had been trampled down by the Rebellion were trampled down still more by these Presidential governments.

For the Unionist there was no liberty of the press or liberty of speech, and the lawlessness of Slavery began to rage anew.

Every day brought tidings that the Rebellion was reappearing in its essential essence.

Amidst all professions of submission, there was immitigable hate to the National Government, and prevailing injustice to the freedman.

Moved by desire to arrest this fatal tendency, I appealed by letter to members of the Cabinet, entreating them to stand firm against a “policy” which promised nothing but disaster.

To my mind, it abandons the freedmen to the control of their ancient masters, and leaves the national debt exposed to repudiation by returning Rebels.

I see small chance of peace, unless these great principles are practically established.

I left the President that night with the painful conviction that his whole soul was set as flint against the good cause, and that by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln the Rebellion had vaulted into the Presidential chair.

The whole Rebel region is little better than a “whited sepulchre.” It is that saddest of all sepulchres, the sepulchre of Human Rights.

The dead men’s bones are the remains of faithful Union soldiers, dead on innumerable fields, or stifled in the pens of Andersonville and Belle Isle,--also of constant Unionists, white and black, whom we are sacredly bound to protect, now…

The uncleanness is injustice, wrong, and outrage, having a loathsome stench; and the President is engaged in “whiting” over these things, so that they shall not be seen by the American people.

Citizenship is defined, and protection is assured at least in what are called civil rights.

The basis of representation is fixed on the number of voters, so that, if colored citizens are not allowed to vote, they will not by their numbers contribute to representative power, and one voter in South Carolina will not be able to…

Ex-Rebels who had taken an oath to support the Constitution are excluded from office, National or State.

The National debt is guarantied, while the Rebel debt and all claim for slaves are annulled.

All these essential safeguards are rudely rejected by the President.

The madness that would set aside provisions so essentially just, whose only error is inadequacy, has broken forth naturally in brutal utterance, where he has charged persons by name with seeking his life, and has stimulated a mob against…

The violence of the President has provoked violence.

His words were dragon’s teeth, which have sprung up armed men.

Who can doubt that the President is author of these tragedies?

The blood at Memphis and New Orleans must cry out until heard, and a guilty President may suffer the retribution which followed a guilty king.

The evil he has done already is on such a scale that it is impossible to measure it, unless as you measure an arc of the globe.

I doubt if in all history there is any ruler who in the same brief space of time has done so much.

There have been kings and emperors, proconsuls and satraps, who have exercised tyrannical power; but facilities of communication now lend swiftness and extension to all evil influences, so that the President is able to do in a year what in…

He should have sent peace; instead, he sent a sword.