Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/171

Rh proportions of its problems, involving the character of our institutions; involving our relations with the world abroad; involving our peace, our rights, our liberties at home; involving our growth and prosperity; involving our moral and political existence as a nation.

How short-sighted, how childish, are those who find its origin in artificial agitation! As though we could produce a tempest by blowing our noses, or cause an earthquake by stamping our puny feet upon the ground. But how to solve, how to decide it? Let us pass in review our political parties and the remedies they propose. There we encounter the so-called Union party, with Bell and Everett, who tell us the best way to settle the controversy is to ignore it.

“ Ignore it! Ignore it, when attempts are made to plunge the country into war and disgrace, for the purpose of slavery extension! Ignore it, when slavery and free labor wage their fierce war about the possession of the national domain! Ignore it, when the liberties of speech and of the press are attacked! Ignore it, when the actual settler claims the virgin soil, and the slaveholding capitalists claim it also! Ignore it, when the planting interest seeks to establish and maintain its exclusive supremacy in our economic policy! Ignore it, indeed! Ignore the fire that consumes the corner posts of your house! Ignore the storm that breaks the rudder and tears to tatters the sails of your ship! Conjure the revolted elements with a meek Mount Vernon lecture! Pour upon the furious waves the placid oil of a quotation from Washington's farewell address!

It is true they tell us that they will enforce the laws and the Constitution well enough! But what laws? Those that free labor demands or those that slavery gives us? What Constitution? That of Washington and Madison, or that of Slidell, Douglas and Taney?