Skip to main content

In Short, No!

March 2023
1min read

I join the Democrats! Never so long as there are sects in churches, weeds in gardens, fleas in hog pens, dirt in victuals, disputes in families, wars with nations, water in the ocean, bad men in America, or base women in France! No, Jordan Clark, you may hope, you may congratulate, you may reason, you may sneer, but that cannot be. The thrones of the Old World, the courts of the Universe … the New World may commit the national suicide of dissolving this Union,—but all this and more must occur before I join the Democracy!

I join the Democracy! Jordan Clark, you know not what you say. When I join the Democracy, the Pope of Rome will join the Methodist church. When Jordan Clark, of Arkansas, is president of the Republic of Great Britain by the universal suffrage of a contented people; when Queen Victoria consents to be divorced from Prince Albert by a county court in Kansas; when Congress obliges by law James Buchanan to marry a European princess; … when Alexander of Russia and Napoleon of France are elected Senators in Congress from New Mexico; when good men cease to go to heaven or bad men to hell; when this world is turned upside down; when proof is afforded both clear and understandable, that there is no God; when men turn to ants, and ants to elephants, I will change my political faith and come out on the side of the Democrats!

The above tirade was the reply of the Unionist editor, the Reverend William G. Brownlow of Tennessee, to Jordan Clark of Camden, Arkansas, when he urged Brownlow to join the Democratic party in the 1860 election. It is reprinted from the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, July, 1959.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "June 1960"

Authored by: Charles Boswell

Foul was fair, and fair foul, when eight players of the championship White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series

Authored by: Harold A. Larrabee

To the question of acquiring new territories overseas, and owning colonies, one group of Americans answered with a resounding “No!”

Authored by: William H. Townsend

Alone in his empty mansion, the venerable Cassius Clay took unto himself a scandalously youthful bride; when the posse came for him, they met more than their match

Authored by: Marshall B. Davidson

Flags flew and champagne flowed when the Czar’s ships anchored in New York Harbor. Fifty years later we learned the reason for their surprise visit

Authored by: J. H. Plumb

Cursed by ancestry,bedeviled by his posterity, beset by forces he could not grasp, George III is usually remembered as the ogre of Jefferson’s Declaration. An eminent English historian reassesses that strange and pathetic personality

Authored by: A. L. Todd

As the debate about rescuing them droned on and on, Lieutenant Greely’s men were dying one by one

Authored by: Charles P. Curtis

When four aristocratic blackquards were jailed for a brutal murder, justice seemed triumphant. But these were no ordinary criminals, and justice needed eloquent help

Authored by: Murat Halstead

In 1860, Southern delegates bolted the Democratic convention at Charleston. An eyewitness describes the first giant step toward secession

Authored by: Rudolf A. Clemen

To Falstaff’s question, early America gave an unequivocal answer. Its roadside taverns were the traveler’s refuge and the townsman’s club

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.