most horrid

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism,” Washington wrote.

And the most horrid smell ever.

Sen. William Preston, a South Carolina Whig, called the statue “the most horrid phantasmagoria I have ever beheld.”

Washington, as president, would later caution the Congress and the nation against the dangers of partisan factionalism, which leads to, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, … which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities.”

As Beejay Silcox recently wrote in The New York Times, “‘Dirt Creek’ is less a tale of murder most horrid than a study in quiet, everyday violence: vicarious trauma, coercive control, victim-blaming, internalized shame.