At the Crossroads: Perpetuation or Poisoning of the Republic?

I have written a number of times in recent years about Ben Franklin’s prophetic warning regarding the Republic falling prey to despots, but there is another prophecy, or quite dire prediction regarding the nation that should be brought out the cobwebs of history as it may have just come true. Ironically, on January 27, 1838, a young yet unknown man gave his first official speech to an audience gathered at the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. His address was entitled, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” The young man was 28 years of age, but soon to have a birthday, but by that time, he had been involved in politics for five years. At such a young age this young man was truly concerned about the continued existence of the Republic -- the government of the United States as it had been instituted. One of his immediate motivations for offering such a speech seems to have been the burning alive of a negro man in St. Louis. Yet, it had been only the most recent of a series of horrible events ravaging the nation over the issue of what southern ‘gentlemen’ referred to as their peculiar institution of African slavery. This young man’s concerns may be somewhat similar to our concerns in this day as we observe the ‘poisoning of the well’ by the new regime that has just come to power. In his day, the young man witnessed the President of the United States forcibly removing American Indian peoples from their ancestral homelands at gunpoint. The action was ruled unconstitutional in that time, but it did not matter. The founder of the Democrat Party, Andrew Jackson, did not concern himself with the rule of law.