His moral courage was equal to the crisis. He arrested the charter until
it could be got to the people, and they have arrested it forever. Had he
not done so, the charter would have become law, and its repeal almost
impossible. The people of the whole Union would now have been in
the condition of the people of Pennsylvania, bestrode by the monster,
in daily conflict with him, and maintaining a doubtful contest for
supremacy between the government of a State and the directory of a
moneyed corporation....
Sir, I think it right, in approaching the termination of this great
question, to present this faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant,
beneficent, and glorious administration of President Jackson. It is not
for me to attempt to do it justice; it is not for ordinary men to attempt
its history. His military life, resplendent with dazzling events, will
demand the pen of a nervous writer; his civil administration, replete
with scenes which have called into action so many and such various
passions of the human heart, and which has given to native sagacity
so many victories over practiced politicians, will require the profound,
luminous, and philosophical conceptions of a Livy, a Plutarch, or a
Sallust.
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