Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 29, 1867

“The Eve of Events.”

It is the height of folly to suppose that the President does not meditate, under certain circumstances, a violent solution of the present situation. We have already endeavored to alarm our readers. Better a false alarm than a fatal apathy or a smiling incredulity. We have also endeavored elsewhere in these columns to show that the question of violence depends very much upon the result of the elections of the autumn. If, from any indifference of feeling, the Republican party declines to poll its full strength, and the Democratic party regains power, the President will undoubtedly forcibly resist a process of impeachment, should Congress think fit to proceed with it.

Nor is it wise to regard such a warning as a mere electioneering trick. The Democratic papers, whose interest it is to lull public apprehension, may loudly say this, but no man who has watched the President, and who understands the force of human passions, will think so. Nor is it of any importance to demonstrate that violence upon the President’s part would be hopeless and utterly futile. Men in his position do not reason. They do not clearly calculate chances. A desperate and ignorant and passionate man strikes indeed blindly and wildly, but he strikes. Does the country realize this? Do the people perceive that the peril is vital and imminent? Do they see that it is not enough to wait for impeachment by Congress, because a Democratic success at the polls would be interpreted by the President as a popular verdict against Congress? Do they feel that the peace of the country depends upon the elections of this autumn as much as its safety hung upon that of 1864? If Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York fully understand this we have no fear of the result. If they do not, every man and woman in the country ought to fear the worst.

We commend to our friends in those States the following extract which we have just received from Washington, written by a perfectly calm and capable observer, who served through the late war: “Do people up North appreciate that we are on the eve of great events? Straws show which way the wind blows, and from little things I am enabled to see in military circles it is evident that they think it not at all unlikely that their swords may have to fly out at any moment; and they keep them well-sharpened and loose in the scabbards, ready for the contingency.”—Harper’s Weekly.

—According to the returns of the internal revenue bureau, more than one hundred and fifty-one thousand “double-thread,” and eighteen thousand “single-thread” sewing-machines were made in this country the last year ending in June. Yet there are few people old enough to use them but remember when they were a great novelty, and a luxury, instead of a necessity of life. This number of machines will do as much work as could be accomplished by the labor of every man, woman, and child, in the city of New York; and all the inhabitants of Detroit could not accomplish as much, working twenty-four hours a day for four years, as these machines will in one year, working on the eight-hour principle; or, in other words, every man, woman and child in this city, working eight hours a day, would be twelve years in sewing as many miles of seams, as these machines will do in one year,