If any one can read the speeches which Mr. Lincoln has made on his recent trip to Washington City without a feeling of intense disgust, we envy him not his disposition. Instead of rising to the dignity of a President, he has fallen to the level of a stump orator.
Original passage & context
"If any one can read the speeches which Mr. Lincoln has made on his recent trip to Washington City without a feeling of intense disgust, we envy him not his disposition. [...] Instead of rising to the dignity of a President, he has fallen to the level of a stump orator, addressing, for temporary effect, a miscellaneous assemblage of the populace. [...] Compare the Indianapolis speech of Lincoln with the inaugural address of President Davis, and how great the contrast! [...] In nothing is the difference between Northern and Southern sentiment and morality better illustrated than in these two addresses."
The Deep-South fire-eater press reading the two presidents side by side, three days after Davis's inaugural — it explicitly asks the reader to "compare the Indianapolis speech of Lincoln with the inaugural address of President Davis" (se-035). Lincoln is not yet in office; he is on the inaugural train, and the Crescent's charge is that he is undignified and does not understand state sovereignty. Non-contiguous sentences from the one editorial joined with [...].