Secession Era Editorials Project

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Prayers and Sneers.

Springfield, Illinois, Illinois State Register [Democratic]

(6 December 1859)

"Brown Prayer Meetings" have been held in all quarters of the north by the black republicans, and a deluge of tears have been shed, "because a scoundrel and traitor has paid the just penalty of the laws. The Illinois Journal neither prays nor weeps, but contents itself with sympathetic sneers at the fears of the people whose blood Brown sought to shed, that other Browns would assail them. It would be difficult to decide which style of sympathetic expression is most to be abhorred, the prayers of the abolition pharisees, or the sneers of their partisan organ here. It is only a question of vicinage. The journal would pray and shriek over Brown, but sneers are less expensive in this locality. That's all the difference.

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