Protester

“ High time, high time for the voice of every true man and woman, of every lover of liberty, to thunder forth such a mighty collective protest that shall reverberate from North to South, and East to West, and rouse the awakened manhood of America to a heroic stand for Liberty and Justice. ”

“ As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed, greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenseless, as a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. ”

“ They hope to transform every demonstration of soldiers and workers into a pogrom, which will frighten the peaceful population and throw it into the arms of the Restorers of Law and Order.
“Under such conditions every attempt to organise a demonstration in these days, although for the most laudable object, would be a crime. All conscious workers and soldiers who are displeased with the policy of the Government will only bring injury to themselves and to the Revolution if they indulge in demonstrations. ”

“ Then a wail of anguished protest went up from the miserable crowd—
“Law—what have we to do with the Law—we who are dead already? We cannot dwell in a strange place. Kill us and put us under the ground on which we have lived our lives. ”

“ What I did, and what I attempted to do, was my protest,—a protest which resounded from one end of the Union to the other, and which, I hope, by the dissemination of this, my narrative, to renew and repeat it,—it was my protest against the infamous and atrocious doctrine that there can be any such thing as property in man! ”

“ They lead directly to disunion and civil commotion; and therefore it is, that at their commencement, when they are first found to be maintained by respectable men, and in a tangible form, I enter my public protest against them all. ”

“ We shall probably encounter more appeals to the multiplied power of assembly, more determination to find a short cut in lawlessness towards attainment, more passive and active resistance in attempts at government by violence rather than government by reason. Others, besides the unemployed or the women, will make this visible protest before all men by exhibition of their willingness to face ridicule, discomfort, physical injury, and even martyrdom in their ardour for the triumph of their cause. ”

“ The finest minds in the world, the greatest masses of workers and their friends, made their protest known to the American government, through its embassies, before its government buildings, in the streets and roadways of America. ”

“ I protest, in the name of the sacred rights of property, contemned and trampled under foot by brutal force. I protest, in the name of citizenship and the inviolability of individual persons, of whose rights no man may be deprived without being accused in form, arraigned and judged. ”

“ If the protest were a threat, it was far removed. Many things might happen before the gray wall should rise high enough to cast its shadow, and the shadow of the coming end, over the miraculous city of the plain. ”

“ Another one of our ablest contemporaries, The Indianapolis Freeman, gives some pertinent thoughts just on this point: "The organized protest of the representatives of nine millions of people against flagrant, unprovoked bloodshed and wrong must attract attention and arouse the intelligent, humane pulse and conscience of the nation and civilized world. ”

“ Nobody should be blamed who, when such things are done, in good faith and from patriotic motives protests against them. In a republic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when demanded by necessity, should never be permitted to pass without a protest on the one hand, and without an apology on the other. ”

“ The workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot, the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is the labourer's head upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the vortex of the crowd. ”

“ But the protest has never taken the shape of an expressed distrust of gentlemen, considered as the staple ways and means of government; nor has the direction of affairs ever descended into the hands of any other or lower class or condition of men. ”

“ And the more the young men laughed, the more they played tricks upon the police, reading the Sermon on the Mount to provoke arrest, reading the Constitution of the United States to invite repression, even reading the riot act by way of diversion for the police, the more did the wooden head of Market Street throb with rage and the more did the people imagine a vain thing. ”

“ And it is not only a few very strong and violent characters, in which the national feeling of legal right raises its protest against such a condition of things, but this protest is sometimes repeated by the whole population under certain forms, which, according to their object or to the manner in which the whole people or a definite class look upon them or apply them, may be considered as popular substitutes for, and accessories to, the institutions of the state. ”

“ Perhaps it is a protest uttered on the threshold of life,—an unconscious protest, distressing to hear; ignorance, smiling on the infinite, seems to make all creation responsible for the fate allotted to a weak and defenceless being. ”

“ A crowd of dirty, dusty rioters rush in, their faces scarlet with brandy, and excitement; tattered, untidy-looking, as if they had been up all night. With the shout: "Weavers, come out!" they disperse themselves through the house. ”

“ The man who flings his whole life into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against the wrongs of his fellow-men, is a saint compared to the active and passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest destroy other lives besides his own. ”

“ No one ever contemplated the simple fact that men do not band themselves together to make a protest without the belief that they have something to protest about, and that in any organized state of society a widespread protest is something for grave inquiry. ”

“ We must believe that in the nature of riots there is something which serves the interests of the government, for I have invariably heard the police accused of inciting them. My resistance, that which I spoke of, will ever be a legal resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press, by the tribune, and with patience,—that great force granted to the oppressed and to the vanquished. ”

“ But opposed to our tyranny has always existed a revolutionary protest. Part of the nation is half-barbarian, but the rest has a superior mentality, a lofty moral spirit which faces danger and sacrifice because of liberty and truth.... ”

“ When the great quarrel between the North and the South was waxing hot and hotter, it was again direct action which preceded and precipitated political action. And I may remark here that political action is never taken, nor even contemplated, until slumbering minds have first been aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions. ”

“ When told that the sovereign’s defenders are outvoted in the Assembly and that resistance to the people is vain, they one and all{91} protest against dignifying by that name the mob of blood-thirsty ruffians who for the time have the capital at their mercy. ”

“ In the hands of those who declare themselves to be our enemies? A fair question from a woman never gets a fair answer. Windows are smashed—not as an argument, but as a protest.”
“A protest strikes me as a futile thing. No one ever does anything that looks unfair or tyrannical without being perfectly sure that was the thing they meant to do. If a protest is successful it creates discord without altering what is done. ”

“ In the eighteenth century the culmination of this rising tide of protest came in a general and determined revolt against despotism in either Church or State, which, at the close of the century, swept away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers, and prepared the way for the marked intellectual and human and political progress which characterized the nineteenth century. ”

“ No one wishes to deny the courage of him who maintains a life-long protest against sharp practice, and we grant you the desirability of the protest; we can even admit the success of one here and there who has undertaken it. ”

“ There were better ways of protesting than by kicking policemen’s shins, breaking windows, and sneaking about at midnight setting fire to houses. Yet when she saw these women pelted, hooted at, and threatened, the spirit of partisanship fired up at the challenge. ”

“ When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail;
When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons;
When kingly men, voting for truth, may fail :—
These are a portent and a call to arms.
Our protest turns into a battle cry:
"Our shame must end, our States be free and clean ”

“ It was only yesterday that the demonstration took place which displeased the masses; yet, in one short night, the order goes forth, the arrangements are made, and before ordinary mortals are out of their beds, thirty thousand of the working classes are marshalled under their leaders, and on their march to make a demonstration of their force, in presence of the executive government—a demonstration which, on the present occasion, to be sure, is favourable to the Government, but which to-morrow may be against it. ”

“ All the blood ever shed in sacrifice, all the eloquence that ever thrilled senates and peoples in defense of the right, all the protests ever in silence felt or in public uttered against the wrong, are here held in everlasting form. ”

“ We humbly claim to be no more than serious students of the history and conditions of our country and her aspirations. We despise hypocrisy, Our practical protest was against the institution, which since its birth, has eminently helped to display not only its worthlessness but its far-reaching power for mischief. ”

“ Sometimes one side, sometimes another would raise a huge mob, and with much pomp and parade, with much blatant speech-making and wide publication of their intentions, would march noisily through the streets towards some public building, at that moment held by the opposite party, avowedly for the purpose of taking it by force of arms. ”

“ Personally I rise to protest. I look on this interference with serious art and thought and serious minds as an outrage. I fear for the ultimate intelligence of America, which in all conscience, judged by world standards, is low enough. ”

“ Illustrations may be given where crowds have gathered together peaceably by reason of extraordinarily good discipline reinforced by vigilant officers. 'Demonstrations' have taken place without any manifestations of force at the time. But I say once more that the crowd moved by noble ideals today can become the mob ruled by hate and passion and greed and violence tomorrow. ”

“ In answer to a question, as to who claimed the right of protest, there were loud cries of "All! All!!" This reporter, who took part with the patriots, goes on to say: "And some waved their hats over their heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts, and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting the lower part on the ground, so as if God had not prevented it, there was very great danger that mischief might have been done. ”

“ It would seem, then, reconcilable neither with reason nor probability, that the men who made these solemn protests,-that a community still warm from the contest induced by them,-should, upon their emancipation from evils considered intolerable, immediately, by a species of political suicide, rivet those same evils indissolubly upon themselves. ”

“ I read indifference and rebellion in your reception of his Highness’s plenipotentiary. But I tell you that your protests will be of no avail; that we refuse to listen for an instant to any one of the fancied scruples which would deprive us, in the very fruition of our hopes, of the reward of so much disinterested self-sacrifice. ”

“ Passion has swept some of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent methods without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. ”

“ Now, I, in common with the wealthy and cultured class generally, of my day, had always held strikers in contempt and abhorrence, as blundering, dangerous marplots, as ignorant of their own best interests as they were reckless of other people's, and generally as pestilent fellows, whose demonstrations, so long as they were not violent, could not unfortunately be repressed by force, but ought always to be condemned, and promptly put down with an iron hand the moment there was an excuse for police interference. ”

“ He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition could produce. ”

“ Yet they must know that the heed paid to our protests against ill-treatment of our citizens will be exactly proportionate to the belief in our ability to make these protests effective should the need arise. ”

“ They protested; but of what benefit is a legal and natural protest to thirty poor defenceless and guiltless young men, loaded with chains by a papal bureaucrat, surrounded by fifty ruffians armed to the teeth? ”

“ We know that among us are objectors and pacifists and those who from political motives are opposing the activities of our President, but these are not dynamiters, nor do they display their disloyalty except through foolish and futile protests. ”