Here I stay this painful catalogue in its various heads, beginning
with nepotism and gift-taking with repayment by office, and ending
in the contrivance against San Domingo with indignity to the African
race,--not because it is complete, but because it is enough. With
sorrow unspeakable have I made this exposure of pretensions, which,
for the sake of republican institutions, every good citizen should
wish expunged from history; but I had no alternative. The President
himself insists upon putting them in issue; he will not allow them
to be forgotten. As a candidate for reëlection he invites judgment,
while partisans acting in his behalf make it absolutely necessary by
the brutality of their assault on faithful Republicans unwilling to
see their party, like the Presidential office, a personal perquisite.
If his partisans are exacting, vindictive, and unjust, they act only
in harmony with his nature, too truly represented in them. There is
not a ring, whether military or senatorial, that does not derive its
distinctive character from himself. Therefore, what they do and what
they say must be considered as done and said by the chieftain they
serve. And here is a new manifestation of that sovereign egotism which
no taciturnity can cover up, and a new motive for inquiry into its
pernicious influence.