Running the machine.
--When the dignified and decent gentleman who presides over the
United States was on his route to
Washington, he declared in one of his wayside speeches that he ‘"should run the machine of the
Government as he found it."’ How he has fulfilled the promise, cinched in this elegant phraseology, the country has now seen.
He has ‘"run the machine" ’ on every principle of civil and political liberty that is contained in the
Constitution and laws of the
United States.
He has run the machine on rights as old as
Magna Charta, until there is not a despotism in
Europe which dares to oppress and enslave its people as
Lincoln oppresses and enslaves the once free country over which he presides.
Such a thing as a free press or free speech is tolerated in no part of his domains.
His machine has crushed to stems every semblance of law, liberty, and justice in the entire
North.
And wherever it has been permitted to operate in the
South, it has overthrown everything like order peace, and security.
He has attempted to run it over the whole
South, but it is still stuck in the mud upon our borders and sea-coast, stained to a deep crimson with the blood of a people whom it can never run over nor subjugate.
The ‘"machine"’ of the United States Government, once the emblem of liberty and law, has become, in
Lincoln's hands, a ponderous Juggernaut, which crushes none so completely as those who fall down to do it homage.
Let us hope that the time is not distant when this accursed ‘"machine"’ will run off the track, and plunge, with its engineer, down a fathomless abyss of shame and retribution.
