| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 20325 |
| QUOTATION: | There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Letter, April 23, 1838, written as a protest against the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia. “Letter to Martin Van Buren, President of the United States,” Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903).
Questions and statements like these enabled Emerson to be rediscovered and reread by the Left in the 1960s and 1970s. |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
| WORKS: | Emerson Collection. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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