He died at Chicago, on Monday morning last, after a brief illness, of typhoid Fever, in the 49th year of his age. For the last fifteen years, he has been the recognized leader of the Northern Democracy, and was its Presidential candidate at the last election, having been repudiated by the Southern wing because he was unwilling to say of slavery, as pertaining to the territories, any thing beyond this: “I do not care whether it is voted up of voted down.” In all other respects, he as been all that the South desired – the advocate of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the abusive assailant of the three thousand New England clergymen who petitioned Congress in opposition to that repeal, the supporter of the Fugitive Sale Law, the bitter and malignant enemy of the Anti-Slavery movement, the encourager of the Border-Ruffian invasion of Kansas, the rampant antagonist of the Republican party, the passive witness of the murderous attack of Preston S. Brooks upon Senator Sumner, and the upholder of the Southern slaveholding policy to the fullest extent………A more unscrupulous politician, however, has never made his appearance upon the American stage; and, perhaps, no one has done so much to debauch the moral sentiment of the North. His ambition was boundless, and his manner at all times confident, self-satisfied, gladiatorial, boisterously defiant. The reason why he did not readily occupy the extreme Southern ground, in regard to slavery in the territories, was not because he was troubled with any conscientious or even constitutional scruples, but because he knew the temper of the North in general, and of his own State in special, on that point, and dared not provoke it. For the same reason, he espoused the side of the government in its present conflict with the Southern traitors — all the more decidedly,because he had been ungratefully ostracized by the entire South. It is in vain that flags are hoisted at half-mast, and bells tolled to commemorate his death; and those Republican journals which are now lauding his his statesman-like qualities and deploring his removal, are manifestly amenable to the charge of political simulation. Death makes no change of character. (Liberator, June 7, 1861, pg 2)
