No Title.Albany, New York, Evening Journal [Republican](31 May 1856)
How unjust and contemptibly mean it is, under these
circumstances, for the organs of the Republican party to
attempt to make political capital out of this personal
quarrel? And yet they are doing it, and would seem to
be justified in their course by the mass of their party.
[Providence Post]
An armed bully assaults, without warning, a
Senator sitting unarmed and defenceless in his
seat. This the Post calls "a quarrel." The old
proverb that "it takes two to make a quarrel," it
discards.
As there have been political crimes in all ages,
so there have been in all ages Doughfaces to
defend them. Doubtless when Brennus and his
armed barbarians burst into the Roman Senate,
plucked the hoary beards, and cut the throats of
those they found there -- there were Doughfaces
outside who represented the matter as "merely a
personal quarrel between a Senator and a Gaul."
Undoubtedly there were among the spectators,
when Sidney was beheaded, and Latimer burnt,
Doughfaces who saw the axe fall and the faggot
blaze, in the full conviction that it was "only a
personal affair of Sidney's" and "merely a personal
quarrel Mr. Latimer had got himself into
by his imprudent preaching."
The "Republican party" in those days, as in
these, undertook to "make political capital" out
of the indignation done to their representatives.
And what is more -- mark you -- they did it. The
"political capital" made out of the blood of
innocent men shed in a righteous cause, was the
"capital" with which the Republican party of
1620 founded these States: the "capital" on
which the Republican party of 1776 based their
"circulating paper," the Declaration of
Independence: and the "capital" with which the
Republican party of 1787 set up in business for
themselves was a National Partnership. It is good
"capital." It is safer "capital" than ever laid
in banker's vaults, surer "capital" than was
ever hoarded in royal exchequer. Let General
Pierce try whether it or his "$17,000,000 surplus"
is of the most value in the political market."
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