The Northern Usurper.
--The declaration of
Lincoln to a citizen of
Virginia, mentioned some time ago in this paper, substantially to the effect that during his life time there would be no more elections for
President, would have fallen upon the
Northern ear in former days like the ravings of a maniac, who must be instantly put in straight jackets and removed from the
White House to a Lunatic Asylum.
Now, it does not produce the effect of a pebble thrown into a pond.
It does not start so much as a ripple in the public mind.
Who would have believed that two years of a war between the North and South would result in the enslavement of the
Northern people, whilst the
South maintained its independence?--Whilst the
South stands erect and hurls defiance at the tyrant, the
North has this "old man of the sea" upon its shoulders, his long legs twisted about its neck till it is half strangled, and it dare not even attempt to throw him off.
Was if for this that the fathers of the Revolution fought and bled through seven long years?
Was that great war of Independence only to exchange George the Third for Abraham the First, a gentleman for a mountebank, the sceptre of a king for the lash a clown?
Does the
North really love Union better than liberty?
We sometimes think so. But if it is willing to surrender its own freedom for the purpose of enslaving others, has it no choice of tyrants?
When the Jews first insisted upon having a king, and when the prophet, having in vain depicted all evils they would suffer from a change in their form of Government, yielded to their ungrateful importunities, they had the good taste and good sense to select a man for their monarch who was qualified by administrative talents, by personal dignity, and illustrious courage, to give
eclat to his position, and command the respect of foreign nations.
When even savages choose a chief, they are careful to pick out the best warrior of their tribe.
It is reserved for the
North, if it permits
Lincoln's ambitious yearnings to be gratified, to lay down their liberties at the foot of an obscure attorney, a quondam rail-splitter, and doggery keeper, a heathen so vulgar and indecent that he has been the just and by-word of christendom, and so personally pusillanimous that he stole into
Washington in disguise in a freight car, and through the whole of this long and bloody war has never once cheered and encouraged his soldiers by his presence on a battle-field.
There is not a King — no, nor a Queen — of
Europe who, in such times as these, would not sometimes have taken the field in person.
Even the young wife of Bomba animated her troops by sharing with them all the perils of the fight.
And is it to a being who has not the pluck of imperial petticoats that the
North yields up its liberties and permits to become its first monarch?
It matters little to us whether the
North is governed by a President or a King; but we should be sorry to see any part of
America so degraded as to place the imperial purple for the first time upon such shoulders as those of
Lincoln.
In hereditary monarchies the crown often descends to incompetent persons; but we think the annals of mankind may be challenged for the parallel of such a first choice as
Lincoln.
There is not a throne, nor a dukedom, nor earldom, nor one noble family of
Europe, whose founder was not a man of mark.
It will be reserved for the
North, if it submits to
Lincoln's pretensions, to appear among the monarchies of the earth with a King whom no respectable noblemen in the Old World would like to acknowledge as his steward.
