The sham aristocracy of to-day, unlike the false aristocracy of 1860, would hire bullies, outcasts, and vagrants to do their fighting, as did those magnificent illustrations of “caste” in our country, Carnegie and Frick, at Homestead, and Son-in-law Webb at Buffalo.
The advocates of “caste” in 1860, the Southerners, not alone possessed courage and determination, but, accepting the result of the conflict, have exhibited since the days of Reconstruction that wonderful degree of political acumen for which they have ever been famous. Early recognizing that in their struggle for an independent national existence, the Southern Confederacy, they had been defeated—not by the aristocracy of the North and West, but by the Common People; that is, the most powerful portion of the population of the Union—the Southerner, the secessionist, the aristocrat of 1860, submerged himself in the ocean of the Common People, the great majority, the democracy! The Secessionist, who opposed Abraham Lincoln’s administration in 1860 and used bullets to express his opposition in 1861, had firm conviction carried to his hesitating heart by the events that transpired between 1861 and 1865, that the “Common People”—the majority—must rule; and that with the freeing of his slaves he had lost the only possible foundation upon which he could rest his claim of social superiority in this country. Therefore, as the wise man that he has demonstrated himself to be, the aristocrat of 1860 has become the most earnest and patriotic member of a broad democracy in 1892; realizing from experience that upon that rock alone he can build the edifice of prosperity in his section of the country; also realizing from a sad experience that the Common People, democracy (though it was called Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party), was the crag upon which his bark of Secession was shivered in 1865.
ANDREW JACKSON.
The “People’s” President, 1828.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Of course I mean Ward McAllister. This is not from his book, but from a recent article of his published in the New York World.