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Updated: May 19, 2025
Edmunds to give the President full power to remove the office-holders. He declared that he "would be the last man to hamper the President in the good work of cleaning out the Augean stable, which he is now about to undertake." He was sure that "the rings must be broken up," that "the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He eulogized President Grant as especially fit for the work.
Brown's course in parliament, however, was pointing to a far more important result than changes in the personnel of office-holders. Hincks once told him that the logical conclusion of that course was the dissolution of the union. There was a measure of truth in this. If he had said dissolution or modification, he would have been absolutely right.
The other in reply engaged to convince him that these steps were taken upon the suggestion and advice of Americans. A few days later he made good his promise by producing certain letters, signed by Hutchinson, Oliver, and others, all natives of and residents and office-holders in America.
The wires had scarcely ceased to thrill with this message of death to slavery-extension, when South Carolina sounded a trumpet-call to the South. Her Legislature ordered a secession state convention to meet in December, issued a call for 10,000 volunteers, and voted money for the purchase of arms. Federal office-holders resigned.
The individual citizen who should heave a brick through the window of a crowded car, set fire to a sleeper, or slug a locomotive engineer at his post of duty would undoubtedly be sent to jail or the lunatic asylum, if detected; but when he conspires and combines with hundreds of others, thereby a thousandfold increasing the danger and damage, it becomes a delicate matter for office-holders to handle, and so, while the leaders are free to roam the land and preach sedition and rebellion, the criminal and vagabond classes, the ignorant and vicious, and the great array of foreign-born, foreign-bred laborers, eagerly await the next opportunity.
But those of us who reflect recognize the dangers that lurk in the "psychology of the crowd"; and we are all aware that, after a popular vote, it is quite possible to discover that few, except a handful of office-holders, have gotten anything that they really want. Democracy is not a panacea for all political evils, and there are democracies of many kinds.
In accomplishing the registration there had been little opposition from the mass of the people, but the press of New Orleans, and the office-holders and office-seekers in the State generally, antagonized the work bitterly and violently, particularly after the promulgation of the opinion of the Attorney-General.
When, therefore, it appeared to the people that he was forming a body of permanent office-holders was recruiting a civil army to occupy in perpetuity the offices which they, the mass, had created and were taxed to pay for the fierce, and in many respects scandalous, partisan assault which Jackson represented, if he did not direct, gathered overwhelming force.
It is just so with the Democrats; hence we almost always have a mixture of office-holders.
The Republicans, on their side, were fearful of the same clean sweep that Williams hoped for, and they therefore looked with greater equanimity upon a bill which might retain in office the existing office-holders, most of whom belonged to their party.
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