moval of the deposits.
The Senate had passed a resolution declaring the conduct of the
President unconstitutional. Against this resolution Jackson had
published a protest. The whole country was in a flame. Into the purely
personal controversy in which he was engaged, Cooper lugged in a
discussion of the political question that was agitating the nation. He
remarked, in the course of it, that if the Union were ever destroyed by
errors or faults of an internal origin, it would not be by executive but
by legislative usurpation. In order apparently to have neither of the
two parties in full sympathy with him, he criticised the appointing
power of the President, and his action in filling embassies. It is by
the most strained interpretation of the danger to our institutions from
imitation of those found in foreign countries, that the political
discussion was dragged into this production. The force of folly could
hardly go farther.

The inevitable result followed. The work pleased nobody, and irritated
nearly everybody. Three influential journals were at once made open and
active enemies, and in their wake followed a long train of minor
newspapers. More than that was effected. The Letter called down upon him
the wrath of a great political party, which in the North embraced a
large majority of the educated class; and its hostility followed him
relentlessly to the grave. Unwise as the work was, however, there (p. 132)
was nothing in it to justify the abuse that in consequence fell upon its
author. To his statement of the danger of legislative usurpation Caleb
Cushing made a dignified, though somewhat rhetorical reply; but while
controverting his opinions, he spoke of Cooper personally with great
respect. But such was not the treatment he generally received. The
language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and
grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It
reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example
will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading
literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis,
and Fay, though the two last were at that time in Europe. Morris is
still remembered by two or three songs he wrote. Besides being an
editor, he held the position of general of militia; accordingly he was
often styled by his admirers, "he of the sword and pen," which was just
and appropriate to this extent, that he did as much