Daily Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1860-1862, 1861-03-13
The Ahon,ionI... on the inaugural
(From the y. Y. AntiSlavcry Standard.)
PRESIDENT IINCnI.N's INArGrRAI

Il.
| Last Monday was the most unlucky dav
| in the life of Abraham Lincoln thus far
More unlucky days may be in store for him.
very likely; but up 10 this present time. a
! more untoward one can hardly have occur
| red Ill the fifty years he has lived. He has
| spoken and thus dissolved the spell which
his wise silence had thrown around his re-
putatiOn. Having shown himself possessed,
in SO singular measure, of that rarest of
talents, in this country at least, the gift of
| holding ones tongue he had created the
| opinion in mems minds that he had some.
thing to say worth hearing, whenever the
time should come for opening his mouth 1t
| was generally believed that his Inaugural Adj
| dress would he honorably distinguished from
| those OF bis predecessors in spirit and in ut
| terance. The Hour has come and gone: but
the Man was not sufficient for it. The speech
was made with the face turned toward the
South and with both knees bowed down be-
fore the idol it wOrships as have been all
of those delivered from the same place for
the last quarter of century. 1t is only dis
unguiShed from such by the clumsiness of
its construction and the vileness of its rhe-
| toric. 1t is lucky for Mr.. Lincoln that it
was not the Constitution of the English Lam
gnage and the Laws of English Grammar
that he was called upon to swear to support
and enforce. For he would have been for
sworn on the spot before all the people, 1t
was paltry malice in Mr.. Seward though
perhaps natural one in his circumstances
to allow State Paper so discreditable to
his successful competitor to go forth to the
world. He knew. when be read it over that
he would have whipped the youngest scholar
he ever had for such composition.
This, however, is the least of the faults of
the Inaugural. We could have wished that
a public document which has been more i'm
patiently waited for, and will be more eager
ly read. in Europe than any the country has
ever produced, had not been so f1agrantly
illiterate. But we could have forgiven the
Term, had the substance been such as the
time demands. III il had breathed resolute
determination TO maintain the rights of the
North and the integrity of the Nation, at all
hazards, it mi ght have commanded respect
that would have disarned criticism. If it
had plainly set forth the encroachments of
slavery upon those rights, and shown how
they had eliminated in the disruption of the
Union, as their natural result proclaiming
his Intention of checking the one and restor-
ing the other, by the fall exercise of all his
constitutional power, he would have taken a
position which even his enemies would have
admired. He was elected by the North. in
the faith that he would express Northern
ideas as opposed to Southern ideas 1t was
supposed that there would be some apprecia-
bic difference between him and Buchanan and
Pierce, dlscernible even on the balcony of
the Capitol. Not that any one supposed he
would deny the existence OF the slave clauses
In the Constitution, or propose to prohibit
the recapture of fugitive slaves and repeal
the tbree-ffths representation. But it was
expected that he would make it clear that
all of the Constitution that recognizes slave
ry must be construed in the strictest manner
and with the least possible detriment of lib.
erty. Nobody supposed that he would make
the duty of executing the Fugitive Slave
clause the first cardinal point of his discourse
of National obligations!
Yet this is precisely what he has DONE
This Representative Man of the Republican
party thinks it entirely immaterial whether
the Constitution means that slaves shall be
restored to their masters by Congress or by
State action, as long as they are caught and
carried back. And so he advises all and sim
gular, wherever slaves are caught in the free
States, 10 abide by laws they hold to be fla
gravity unconstitutional as well as inbuman.
and help execute them as long as they stand
On the statute book. We wonder whether
the President imbibed this view of the High
er Law from the earlier or later inspirations
of his Prime Minister. We concede that Mr..
Lincoln could not do otherwise, if he were
obliged to express any opinion in the prem
ises, than to affirm the right of the Southern
Shylock to his pound of flesh, next to his VIC
tim heart. But, we conceive, as the repre-
sentative of the ideas of the North, he should
have added most emphatically that the Jew,
must see to it that he shed no blood aud cut
no less nor more than just u pound of flesh.
-tai I,t,t-