Excerpt from Puritanism in Politics: Speech of Hon. S. S. Cox, of Ohio, Before the Democratic Union Association, January 13, 1863

Chief Justice Shaw, Benjamin F. Thomas and Judge Curtis, and suctiihustrious men (cheers) with. Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Gov. Andrew, Charles Sumner, and the lesser spawn of Transcendentalism. (hisses.) The one class have ever cultivated the graces ofcivil order; the other have been and are the Mar plots of the Republic.

I speak of that ruling element, which even before it reached our shores, while it was in exile in Holland, while it ruled in early days at Plymouth and at Boston, and which has since been distributed all over our country, presents always the same selfish, pharasaical, egotistic andintolerant tvpe of character. We find it in our politics to day, as the Tudors found it three hundred years'ago, ever meddling for harm and yet seeking its own safely by concessions, but never conceding anything for the welfare of others, unless, thereby, it could help itself in larger measure. (laughter and cheers.) Even in the tune of Elizabeth, it compromised with its persecutors, by agreeing to the passage of a bill by Parliament which shielded the Presbyterians. But provided a punishment for the Separatzsls. Hopkins closes his history of the Puritans of that time, by saying, with dis criminating justice, that we do not claim for them that hey had well defined and correct ideas of civil liberty. For example, the dis pensing power of the sovereign - utterly in mockery of all legislation and practically a canker at the root of civil liberty - seems to have been generally admitted by them. Just as now, when it suits their interest and Object, they clamor for the proclaint-ions and confis cations, which dispense with the Constitution. (applause) It we are to take their own account of them selves, as for insfance, when garnished with the rhetoric of Bancroft, one might infer that they deserved the eulogy of Macaulav, and that every petty breebyfer was the v1csgi rent of the Most High, specially anointed to reproach mankind with its shortcomings. (laughter.) The truth is, that the r history, as wri'ten by themselves, has been glossed with lal: ehood. Investigation is fast rubbing ofi' the lacquer and the rotten framework of their ethics an politics is beginning to appear. If they are permitted to write the annals of this present war, the truth will never appear. (laughton) But so momentous a conflict as this has awak ened better minds and in the history which posterity will read, the Puritans will olav the part of intermeddling destructives, self-willed and intolerant, beyond any characters yet known to history.

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