[13] the enforcement of the laws, and the protection of its property, on the part of the national Government, impudently denounced by the traitors and their accomplices as “coercion,” “tyranny,” and “a declaration of war” —with the murderous avowal that Abraham Lincoln shall never be inaugurated President of the United States, and the unquestionable purpose of these Catilines and Arnolds to seize the Capital, and take possession of the Government by a coup daetat, which we have long prophesied would be their last desperate effort to keep the reins of power in their own grasp, and which we have no doubt will be successful, in spite of all the precautions of Gen. Scott.1 In this state of things,—when the elements are melting with fervent heat, and thunders are uttering their voices, and a great earthquake is shaking the land from centre to circumference, threatening to engulf whatever free institutions are yet visible,—Mr. Seward, with the eyes of expectant millions fastened upon him as “ the pilot to weather the storm,” rises in the Senate to utter well-turned periods in glorification of a Union no longer in existence, and to talk of “meeting prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle (!), and violence with the right hand of peace” ! The tiger is to be propitiated by crying “pussy-cat!” and leviathan drawn out with a hook! The word “treason” or ‘traitors’ is never once mentioned—--no recital is made of any of the numberless outrages committed—no call is made upon the President to be true to his oath, and to meet the public exigency with all the forces at his command—no patriotic indignation flushes his cheek—but all is calm as a summer's morning, cool, compliant, unimpassioned! His boldest word is, “We already have disorder, and violence is begun.” How very discreet! It is a penny-whistle used to hush down a thunderstorm of the first magnitude—capping Vesuvius with a sheet of straw paper! And this is all the statesmanship of William H. Seward, in a crisis unparalleled in our national history! Stand aside! “The hour” has come, but where is “the man” ?2
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2 This article extorted a frank confession and tribute from the Boston Courier, then under the editorship of George Lunt, and the most virulent and disloyal journal in New England at that time: ‘We ask our readers to ponder carefully these telling and effective sentences, and to ask themselves whether there is not a good deal of truth as well as of force in them. They serve to show the degree of power which a man like Mr. Garrison wields, who plants himself upon an immutable principle, and firmly stands there, regardless of consequences. . . . His path of duty lies as clear before him as the travelled highway. He has no temptation to turn to the right hand or the left. He has no doubts, no misgivings, no questionings. Onward, straight onward, like the flight of an arrow through the air, does he move to his aim. It is not necessary for us to disclaim all sympathy with the ends and objects for which Mr. Garrison lives. To us, he and his party are all wrong; but they are consistently, manfully, and resolutely wrong. We never read a speech or an article of Mr. Garrison's without a consciousness of the power which his deep and fervid convictions give him. . . . The incurable weakness of Mr. Seward's position is, that he is ever halting between two opinions. . . . He is obliged to say one thing at Washington, and another at Rochester; one thing in the spring, and another in the autumn. . . . He blows hot and cold; he speaks with two voices; he backs and fills; he utters a brave threat, and then seems to shrink back from the echo of his own voice’ (Boston Courier, Jan. 21, 1861; Lib. 31: 20).
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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