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Albany, New York, Evening Journal [Republican]

(31 May 1856)

How unjust and contemptibly mean it is, under these circumstances, for the organs of the Republican party to attempt to make political capital out of this personal quarrel? And yet they are doing it, and would seem to be justified in their course by the mass of their party. [Providence Post]

An armed bully assaults, without warning, a Senator sitting unarmed and defenceless in his seat. This the Post calls "a quarrel." The old proverb that "it takes two to make a quarrel," it discards.

As there have been political crimes in all ages, so there have been in all ages Doughfaces to defend them. Doubtless when Brennus and his armed barbarians burst into the Roman Senate, plucked the hoary beards, and cut the throats of those they found there -- there were Doughfaces outside who represented the matter as "merely a personal quarrel between a Senator and a Gaul." Undoubtedly there were among the spectators, when Sidney was beheaded, and Latimer burnt, Doughfaces who saw the axe fall and the faggot blaze, in the full conviction that it was "only a personal affair of Sidney's" and "merely a personal quarrel Mr. Latimer had got himself into by his imprudent preaching."

The "Republican party" in those days, as in these, undertook to "make political capital" out of the indignation done to their representatives. And what is more -- mark you -- they did it. The "political capital" made out of the blood of innocent men shed in a righteous cause, was the "capital" with which the Republican party of 1620 founded these States: the "capital" on which the Republican party of 1776 based their "circulating paper," the Declaration of Independence: and the "capital" with which the Republican party of 1787 set up in business for themselves was a National Partnership. It is good "capital." It is safer "capital" than ever laid in banker's vaults, surer "capital" than was ever hoarded in royal exchequer. Let General Pierce try whether it or his "$17,000,000 surplus" is of the most value in the political market."

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