Reign of Terror Quotes
The terror to which he referred was to the French Revolution’s executing former aristocrats and then including anyone suspected of monarchist sympathies. This quotation shows how fanatics can rationalize evil as justice.
He was executed the next day with Danton and others who the Revolution had turned upon.
The terror to which he referred was to the French Revolution’s executing former aristocrats and then including anyone suspected of monarchist sympathies.
Marat was one of the leaders of the French Revolution who advocated the execution of so many people that became known as the “Reign of Terror.” His name is associated with massive bloody violence by the existing government. Morris observed that the English system executed far more people over the years, but was not looked upon as so heinous.
Later, in 1973, he himself was denounced and sentenced to the guillotine. When he was sentenced, hecklers asked him if his blood was too pure for execution throwing his quotation back at him.
What oven gets overlooked in the history leading up to the Civil War was the terribly repressive atmosphere that developed in the South itself over the issue of slavery. There were some abolitionists in the South, and most of the slaves were held by a relatively few wealthy men. Many with no slaves or only one or two, might go either way on the slavery issue and the various fugitive slave laws. And Northern abolitionists sometimes would come South to investigate and report on the conditions of the slaves of the South. While still in the Union, many Southern areas made a mockery of the Constitutional protections of freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Censorship and repressive activities invaded privacy, and the South, for both Northerners and English travelers, no longer had the charm of the past. Note the use of the term “reign of terror”. Bunch was a seasoned diplomat experienced at reporting on conditions.
Ironically, just before the bloody French Revolution, there was a substantial movement in France to abolish the death penalty. But the revolution triggered a reign of terror that was shocking to all of Europe then and in the future.
