George Cary Eggleston Quotes
Founded upon a constitution which jealously withheld from it nearly all the powers of government, without even the poor privilege of existing beyond the moment when some one of the States composing it should see fit to put it to death, the Richmond government nevertheless grew speedily into a despotism, and for four years wielded absolute power over an obedient and uncomplaining people. It tolerated no questioning, brooked no resistance, listened to no remonstrance. It levied taxes of an extraordinary kind upon a people already impoverished almost to the point of starvation. It made of every man a soldier, and extended indefinitely every man's term of enlistment. Under pretense of enforcing the conscription law it established an oppressive system of domiciliary visits. To preserve order and prevent desertion it instituted and maintained a system of guards and passports, not less obnoxious, certainly, than the worst thing of the sort ever devised by the most paternal of despotisms. In short, a government constitutionally weak beyond all precedent was able for four years to exercise in a particularly offensive way all the powers of absolutism, and that, too, over a people who had been living under republican rule for generations.
Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
George Cary Eggleston, 1839-1911, Writer & Confederate Soldier, “A Rebel's Recollections”, The Atlantic Monthly, 1874
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Nine years later he was responsible for Napoleon’s election as Consul.
Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
Fremont and some of the Radical Republicans wanted Lincoln immediately to declare the slaves of the rebelling states free. As a major general in charge of an area, he wrote a military order emancipating all the slaves in his jurisdiction. President Lincoln countermanded the order as soon as he found out. He wanted Fremont to only free the slaves whose owners were actively working against the union. Lincoln needed to hold the border states like Maryland in the Union and was working on a plan whereby slave owners who were loyal to the Union would be economically compensated when their slaves were freed. If loyal slaveholders in Fremont’s area would lose their slaves with no compensation, Lincoln feared that the otherwise loyal border states would be driven to the confederacy thus shifting the balance of power. Lincoln had his own plan for emancipation and would not allow Fremont to alter that. As a result of this speech, the Radical Republicans nominated Fremont to run against Lincoln. For a few weeks he looked like he would run, but then he and Lincoln made a deal. Lincoln fired Montgomery Blair, Fremont’s arch enemy, from the cabinet, and Fremont withdrew from the election.
Arguing the need to limit the power of the legislature:
See Louis Brandeis for a later judicial interpretation of this view.
Description of the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which ruled Mexico for 71 straight years.
This quotation is inscribed on the FDR Memorial in Washington DC.
Napoleon had been a great supporter of Napoleon, but had become disillusioned.
The Priest was the right wing demagogic radio host of his day. Virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Black, he was threatened with excommunication by the Catholic Church, which finally ordered him to cease us weekly radio show and stop the political hate.
FDR was a marvelous judge of men and their character. De Gaulle could not separate himself from France and pushed the French Republic towards one man rule (himself) as much as anyone since Napoleon Bonaparte.
At the time of this statement most people thought that Bush was joking. But by the end of his Presidency many looked back on the quote and thought that Bush had such preferences. He unilaterally took the country into the Iraq War and assumed Presidential Powers that no other president had ever attempted. Most serious, his administration actually took the formal legal position that the President did not have to obey the law if he unilaterally thought that it was not in the nation’s interest from the point of view of the Commander in Chief. So many debate whether this quotation was a light hearted joke of a harbinger of his real feelings about the Presidency.
George Cary Eggleston American author and brother of fellow author Edward Eggleston (1837–1902). Sons of Joseph Cary Eggleston and Mary Jane Craig. After the American Civil War he published a serialized account of his time as a Confederate soldier in The Atlantic Monthly. These serialized articles were later collected and expanded upon and published under the title "A Rebel's Recollections."
