Andrew Johnson lacked Lincoln's qualities of greatness. While Lincoln had been open-minded, willing to listen to criticism, attuned to the currents of northern public opinion, and able to get along with all elements of his party, Johnson was stubborn, deeply racist, and insensitive to the opinions of others. If anyone was responsible for the wreck of his presidency, it was Johnson himself, first by establishing new governments in the South in which blacks had no voice whatsoever, and then refusing, when these governments sought to reduce freedpeople to a situation akin to slavery through the Black Codes, to heed the rising tide of northern concern. As congressional opposition mounted, Johnson refused to budge.
Eric FonerRelated topics
able anyone black budge concern criticism establishing greatness heed listen northern opinion opposition party presidency public reduce responsible rising seek situation slavery south stubborn tide voice while willing wreck others lincoln elements johnson andrew racistRelated quotes
Whatever it was that darkened the love between the uncle and his niece, their quarrels became more violent and at the end of the summer of 1931 Geli announced that she was returning to Vienna to resume her voice studies. Hitler forbade her to go. The next morning Geli Raubal was found shot dead in her room. The coroner reported that a bullet had gone through her chest below the left shoulder and penetrated the heart; it seemed beyond doubt that the shot was self-inflicted. Yet for years afterward in Munich there was murky gossip that Geli Raubal had been murdered -- by Hitler in a rage, by Himmler to eliminate a situation that had become embarrassing to the party. But no credible evidence ever turned up to substantiate such rumors.
William L. Shirer
There's a rush today to prescribe who is black, to prescribe what our differences, or to ignore what our differences, are. Of course, those of us who came from the rural South were different from the blacks who came from the large northern cities, such as Philadelphia and New York. We were all black. But that similarity did not mask the richness of our differences. Indeed, one of the advantages of growing up in a black neighborhood was that we were richly blessed with the ability to see the individuality of each black person with all its fullness and complexity. We saw those differences at school, at home, at church, and definitely at the barbershop on Saturday morning.
Clarence Thomas
No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil Servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. And where would the ordinary simple folk-the common people, as they like to call them in America-where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?
Winston Churchill
I do not believe that our friends at the South have any just idea of the state of feeling, hurrying at this moment to a pitch of intense exasperation, between those who respect their political obligations, and those who apparently have no impelling power but that which a fanatical position on the subject of domestic Slavery imparts. Without discussing the question of right - of abstract power to secede - I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if, through the madness of Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason's and Dixon's line merely. It [will] be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred.
Franklin Pierce
The conflict between the theories of Surrealism & pure abstraction leads many to look upon one as black & bad & the other as white & good. Yet it seems to me that a good work of art has always contained both abstract & surrealist elements – just as it has both classical & romantic elements (order & surprise?).. .Surrealism is widening the field of contemporary art & is giving more freedom to the artist (& perhaps what is not unimportant, – stretching the appreciation of the public). Abstraction is re-establishing fundamental laws; bringing back form to painting & sculpture. There are many products of surrealism which I personally dislike,.. ..but equally Unimportant to me are the empty decorations produced in the name of abstraction.
Henry Moore
