Plain Words by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1866

Plain Words.

By Editor

In the last Independent we find an article in reference to the late visit of Andrew Johnson to Chicago to preside on the occasion of laying the corner-stone of the Douglas monument. It exposes with an unsparing hand his departures from his professed Republican principles, and his complicity with rebels and traitors. Had we space to give it entire, it would well repay perusal. As it is we can give but two paragraphs:

“What an opportunity for a great career was offered to this man, before the nation suspected that he was a trickster! But that stone-cut head, that deep-set and lachrymious eye, that half-clenched hand seeking to be a fist, indicate a man who might be a hero among bullies, but can never be a champion of moral ideas. Accordingly, though he might have restored the Union in thirty days after Lee’s surrender by simply dictating Impartial Justice, he chose instead to reanimate the rebellion and to re-imperil the country. Though he might have won a proud title as the uplifter of the lowly, he chose instead to remand the oppressed to be crushed by the oppressor. Though he might have established perennial order in the rebellious states, he chose instead to restore the old hostilities of twenty years ago. Though he might have re-constructed the Republic in the spirit of unity, and with the bond of peace, he chose instead to keep it angrily divided, section against section, to this unhappy hour.”

The article closes with the following paragraph. Not much of peace or prosperity can our country expect if the foregoing and following paragraphs contain a true description of its chief magistrate, personally and politically.

“Meanwhile, in the solemn hour when he stands by the monument of Douglas, let him forecast the epitaph on his own. Happy is he who, after death, lives again in a nation’s grateful remembrance. Cursed is he who, dying, is buried beneath the reproaches of the just and the accusations of the poor. Touched with insanity, corrupted with lust, stimulated with drink, let the President of the United States, standing for a half-hour by the grave’s edge, calm his blood and chasten his thoughts, till he can reflect, for his warning, how a chief magistrate who betrays his country shall become a handful of dishonored dust.”