iumph of
the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of
course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility. We all
threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down
headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long-
suffering and oppressed subjects. We took half the credit of the
performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in
it. Our editors, from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, indited paragraphs
for a thousand and one newspapers, congratulating the Parisian patriots,
and prophesying all manner of evil to holy alliances, kings, and
aristocracies. The National Intelligencer for September 27, 1830,
contains a full account of the public rejoicings of the good people of
Washington on the occasion. Bells were rung in all the steeples, guns
were fired, and a grand procession was formed, including the President of
the United States, the heads of departments, and other public
functionaries. Decorated with tricolored ribbons, and with tricolored
flags mingling with the stripes and stars over their heads, and gazed
down upon by bright eyes from window and balcony, the "general
sympathizers" moved slowly and majestically through the broad avenue
towards the Capitol to celebrate the revival of French liberty in a
manner becoming the chosen rulers of a free people.

What a spectacle was this for the representatives of European kingcraft
at our seat of government! How the titled agents of Metternich and
Nicholas must have trembled, in view of this imposing demonstration, for
the safety of their "peculiar institutions!"

Unluckily, however, the moral effect of this grand spectacle was marred
somewhat by the appearance of another procession, moving in a contrary
direction. It was a gang of slaves! Handcuffed in pairs, with the
sullen sadness of despair in their faces, they marched wearily onward to
the music of the driver's whip and the clanking iron on their limbs.
Think of it! Shouts of triumph, rejoicing bells, gay banners, and
glittering cavalcades, in honor of Liberty, in immediate contrast with
men and women chained and driven like cattle to market! The editor of
the American Spectator, a paper published at Washington at that time,
speaking of this black procession of slavery, describes it as "driven
along by what had the appearance of a man on horseback." The miserable
wretches who composed it were doubtless consigned