Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/125

Rh around Douglas's colors because they believed in his principles, will, from his most devoted friends, become his most indignant accusers. They are already unwittingly denouncing his doctrines, even while trying to defend him; they will not be sparing in direct denunciations as soon as they discover how badly they have been deceived and how ignominiously they were to be sold. We might, indeed, feel tempted to pity him, if we had not to reserve that generous emotion of our hearts for those who are wrong by mistake and unfortunate without guilt.

Mr. Douglas's ambiguous position, which makes it possible for him to cheat either the North or the South, without adding a new inconsistency to those already committed, makes it at the same time necessary for him to put his double-faced theories upon an historical basis, which relieves him of the necessity of expressing a moral conviction on the matter of slavery either way. To say that slavery is right, would certainly displease the North; to say that slavery is wrong, would inevitably destroy him at the South. In order to dodge this dangerous dilemma, he finds it expedient to construe the history of this country so as to show that this question of right or wrong in regard to slavery had nothing whatever to do with the fundamental principles upon which the American Republic was founded. Dealing with slavery only as a matter of fact, and treating the natural rights of man and the relation between slavery and republican institutions as a matter of complete indifference, he is bound to demonstrate, that slavery never was seriously deemed inconsistent with liberty, and that the black never was seriously supposed to possess any rights which the white man was bound to respect.

But here he encounters the Declaration of Independence laying down the fundamental principles upon which the Republic was to develop itself; he encounters the ordinance