De Alexander

Despotic governments do not love the agitators that call them into existence.

When the public safety permits, he said threateningly, there will be abundant time to condemn and punish the authors of injustice and wrong, whether they occupy the presidential chair or seats in the cabinet.

Dropping his well-selected words with the skill of a practised debater, he blended the history of past wrongs with those of the present, thus harrowing his auditors into a frame of mind as resentful and passionate as his own.

He manifested a desire to appear scrupulously loyal to the Government, counseling obedience to constituted authorities, respect for constitutional obligations, and a just and liberal support of the President, in whose favour every…

It is the government of our fathers, worth just as much as if it was administered by Andrew Jackson.

He boldly declined, therefore, to accept a nomination as attorney-general on a platform that emphatically condemned such measures, when deemed essential to the government's safety.

Men recognised that in time of war more reserve was necessary in dealing with an Administration than during a period of peace, for if the government's arm was paralysed it could not stay the arm of the public enemy.

To some the drift of the speeches and resolutions seemed an encouragement to armed rebellion; to others, although jealous of individual rights, it appeared to confuse the liberty of the press with license.

Like Loomis he resented arbitrary arrests in States removed from actual hostilities, where the courts were open for the regular administration of justice, and with a few ringing sentences he threw the delegates into wild cheering.

The responsibility was upon him, and the people, irrespective of party, should strengthen his hands until danger had disappeared and the government was re-established in all its strength.

Rather than that bold rebellion should destroy the government, he said, he preferred to allow the President to take his own course.

Moreover, he understood the difficulty, during a period of war, of conducting an impartial, constitutional opposition to the policy of the Administration, without its degeneration into a faction, which at any moment might be shaken by…

For the first time on this continent we have passports, which even Louis Napoleon pronounces useless and odious.

At this moment at least one thousand men are 'bastilled' by an authority as despotic as that of Louis, three times as many as Eldon and George III seized when they trembled for his throne.

And you know that neither press nor lips may venture to arraign the government without being silenced.

The Secretary of State puts into his bastille, with a warrant as irresponsible as that of Louis, any man whom he pleases.

We live to-day, every one of us, under martial law.

Public sentiment generally sustained the Administration in such action, but many persons, including conservative Republicans, frequently questioned the right or justice of such procedure.

Never will our country see peace unless we do....

Repelling the doctrine that any State can rightfully secede from the Union, they hold next in abhorrence that aggressive and fanatical sectional policy which has so largely contributed to the present danger of the country.

Above all, they repel the idea that there exists between the two sections of the Union such an incompatibility of institutions as to give rise to an irrepressible conflict between them, which can only terminate in the subjugation of one or…

Democrats would unite with all citizens opposed to any war and equally to any peace which is based upon the idea of the separation of these States, and who regard it the duty of the Federal government at all times to hold out terms of…

He admitted the wisdom of filling public offices with pure and able men who commanded the confidence of the people, and suggested, with a play of sarcasm, that if such an example were set in filling Federal offices, it would probably be…

Most people professed to favour the preservation of the Union, and thousands of young men irrespective of party had enlisted for the suppression of armed rebellion.

It seemed a verification of the Southern boast that one Confederate could whip two Yankees, and deepened the conviction that the war was to be long and severe.