NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
November-December 1860
From The Missouri Democrat, Wednesday, November 7, 1860.
Victory! Peace!!
The seven year’s war is at last ended, by the election of Abraham Lincoln as Chief Magistrate of the Republic. Let the nation rejoice at this glorious event. Let a choral shout of exultation rise from the soul of the people, at this, their great victory, over the enemies of freedom and the upholders and champions of wrong. The joy is too great for verbal expansions; the vista opened is too radiant and boundless for description.
For nearly seven years the two principles have fought for the possession of the broad outlying Territories—the one entering the arena like a naked man, the other armed to the teeth—and Freedom, such is the God-like force that dwells in it, has prevailed. Slavery, shorn of its prestige, and baffled in all its cunning arts and desperate expedients, retires within its ancient limits like an invading army, beaten back.
Thus is the glorious truth emphasized again, that right at last makes might. Thus have American institutions reinstated themselves in the affections and admiration of the world. The Sovereignty of the people rising in awful majesty has overwhelmed the minions of oligarchical tyranny and slavery propagandism. The fiat has gone forth which transfers the scepter from the nerveless grasp of recreant and degenerate Democracy to another power, in the person of Abraham Lincoln. That dethroned and discrowned dynasty will never again betray the rights which it was appointed to guard and vindicate. The line fitly ends with James Buchanan.
Will any faction in the country dare to raise a rebel howl against the sovereignty of the nation, as exercised in the election of Lincoln? We hope not, for if any faction should, swift ruin would fall upon it like a thunderbolt. The duty of all loyal men, now that the contest is over, is to rally round the nation’s choice, and give effect to the nation’s will. The distinctive party appellations should be no longer heard; all mere party strife should be suspended until the enemies of the Union, if they dare proceed to overt acts, are compelled to submit to the laws. Treason should be extinguished, before party controversies are revived. But it is our firm belief, that never was the country less liable to be subjected to the desolating curse of civil war. Peace will follow our victory. The President elect is a wise, temperate, conservative, patriotic Statesman, whose noble ambition it will be to demean himself in his high office for the good of all; not to make himself the leader of a crusade against one section of the country. It is, therefore, the duty of all men who are not disloyal to the institutions under which they live, and faithless to the Constitution which they have swore to maintain—it is their duty to give his administration a fair trial before condemning him. He is the nation’s choice, and no anointed king since the days of David could claim a diviner right to rule than he. But who can realize the full meaning of his election? The United States, under the policy which he is commissioned to inaugurate, will enter on a new career—a career which will be attended, with a wondrous material development, and the elevation of the public mind to higher and nobler reaches—a career which shall restore the country to the path of true progress and put an end to the sectional jealousies and antipathies which have grown rank under Democratic misrule.
