His Views and Principles
to the Victors." Ah! there are no murderous Edwards or Henrys, no tyrant Charleses or Jameses on the roll of American Presidents: there you see names like Jackson and Pierce and Buchanan, which make the cheek glow and the heart beat high. They talk of the statesmanship, of the power of kings: what statesmanship, what power can compare with Lincoln's great action when with a stroke of the pen he transmuted a race of ignorant, incapable, "impossible" Negroes into free American citizens with votes to give or to sell, with heads which, though woolly, were as high as the heads of any white man? I know that there is a legend to the effect that the Negroes turned the Legislatures into orgies, and ruined the finances of the Southern States for years; but I need scarcely point out that this cannot be true, since if it were so, all men would not be equal—which is absurd, and a proposition which would land us in the inexpressibly grotesque conclusion that there may be something to be said for our House of Lords.
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