Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/183

 /ft /'i-t l' ///>/-/// ( 'out unlit, nl' (i find ^'iiiitfi ('. V. 177

In 1^55. Seiiat<.-r Benjamin !. Wade .! < )hio ( afterwards, as \\ e know, one of the most notorious South haters i, sai protect their own citi/ens, and to consolidate this government into a miserable despotism."

And he further said, on the iSth of December, 1860:

" I do not so much blame the people of the South, because I think they have been led to believe that we to-day, the dominant party, who are about to take the reins of government, are their mortal foes, and stand ready to trample their institutions under foot."

And notwithstanding the expression of these sentiments, we know, a> we say, that this man became one of the most ardent supporters of the "miserable despotism" established by Abraham Lincoln, and became the second officer in that " despotism " on the assassina- tion of Mr. Lincoln.

DOCTRINE HEI.D BY (JREELEY.

On the Qth of November, in 1860, Mr. Horace Greeley, the great apostle of the Republican party, and who was often referred to dur- ing Mr. Lincoln's administration as the " power behind the throne greater than the throne itself" said in his paper, the New York

Tribune:

"If the Cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable. we maintain their perfect right to discuss it: nay, we hold with Jef- ferson, to the alienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious; and if Cotton States decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent."

< )n the \i\\\ of December, 1860, just three days before the sion of South Carolina, he again said in the Tribune: