But enough for the New York meeting. It was of no importance, except as indicating the existence, and giving a blundering expression to the objects, of one of the most malignant and unpatriotic factions which this country has ever seen. The faction is led by a few cold-blooded politicians universally known as the meanest sycophants of the South and the most impudent bullies of the North; but they have contrived to array on their side a considerable number of honest and well-meaning dupes by a dexterous appeal to conservative prejudice and conservative passion, so that hundreds serve their ends who would feel contaminated by their companionship. Never before has Respectability so blandly consented to become the mere instrument and tool of Rascality. The rogues trust to inaugurate treason and anarchy under the pretence of being the special champions of the Constitution and the Laws. Their real adherents are culled from the most desperate and dishonest portions of our population. They can hardly indite a leading article, or make a stump speech, without showing their proclivities to mob-law. To be sure, if a known traitor is informally arrested, they rave about the violation of the rights of the citizen; but they think Lynch-law is good enough for "Abolitionists." If a General is assailed as being over prudent and cautious in his operations against the common enemy, they immediately laud him as a Hannibal, a Caesar, and a Napoleon; they assume to be his special friends and admirers; they adjure him to persevere in what they conceive to be his policy of inaction; and, as he is a great master in strategy, they hint that his best strategic movement would be a movement, _à la_ Cromwell, on the Abolitionized Congress of the United States. Disunion, anarchy, the violation of all law, the appeal to the lowest and fiercest impulses of the most ignorant portions of the Northern people,--these constitute the real stock-in-trade of "the Hang-Jeff.-Davis-and-Charles-Sumner" party; but the thing is so managed, that, formally, this party appears as the special champion of the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws.
Opinion Digest
Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 — Part 152
2026-11-15 07:55:12 · The Daily Ledger
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