demagogues?
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in June 1865:
Negro Suffrage.
The radical element is very much excited over the President’s North Carolina proclamation, and an open rupture is threatened. The exclusion of the negro from the right of suffrage in the re-organization of that State, is quite enough to call out the passions and enmities of this class of agitators. Wendell Phillips, as head of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, openly denounces President Johnson and declares that “every man who supports the North Carolina proclamation is a Davis’ Sychophant.” He demands immediate negro suffrage in the Southern States, and threatens a repudiation of the national debt if his demand is rejected. Upon this issue he proposes to array the opposition to President Johnson, unless he can be induced to change his convictions of right, override all constitutional rights of the States, and proclaim universal suffrage to the negro race. But the President will not be swayed by the clamor of the New England demagogues. Having marked out his line of policy, he will follow it, though resisted by the entire radical element of the country. Demagogues may be in favor of converting slaves to sovereigns in the twinkling of an eye, but the majority of the American people will not for a moment acquiesce in such an extraordinary usurpation of power [clipping cut off here]
From The New-York Times June 20, 1865:
THE UNSPEAKABLE WORD.
— It is evident that there is one word which henceforth no public man will dare to pronounce in America, unless he does so for the purpose of execrating that which it characterizes — we refer to the word repudiation. Mr. WENDELL PHILLIPS was thoughtless enough to speak the word lately, and the storm of execration was at once so tremendous and universal, that even he was compelled to wriggle himself outside of what he had said.
There is a lesson and a warning here to all politicians and to all parties, which they would do well to heed, and which they are very likely to heed. No man or party dare to put out a suggestion of National dishonor when all men and parties in the nation are interested in sustaining its honor. The sensitiveness of the people on this matter is very intense, as WENDELL PHILLIPS has learned.
