Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/173

Rh wildest filibusters may always count upon his tenderest sympathies.

So I say I might have ignored him, if he had not succeeded in creating the most deafening of noises with the hollowest of drums.

He proposes to repress the “irrepressible conflict” with what he emphatically styles “his great principle.” At first he defined it as “self-government of the people in the territories”; but it soon became apparent that under his great principle the people of the territories were governed by anybody but self, and he called it “popular sovereignty.” It soon turned out that this kind of sovereignty was not very popular after all, and he called it “non-intervention.” Methinks something will intervene pretty soon and he will strain his imagination for another name, if it be worthwhile at all to christen a thing which never had any tangible existence.

But if we may believe him, his “great principle,” and nothing but his “great principle,” will settle the “irrepressible conflict,” and restore peace and harmony to the nation; and save the Union.

Let us judge the merits of the great principle by its results. Has it secured to the inhabitants of the territories the right of self-government? Never were the people of a territory subject to a despotism more arbitrary and to violence more lawless and atrocious than were the people of Kansas after the enactment of the Nebraska bill. Has it removed the slavery question from the halls of Congress? The fight has never raged with greater fierceness, and Congress hardly ever came so near debating with bowie knives and revolvers, as about the questions raised by the Nebraska bill. Has it established safe and uniform rules for the construction of the Constitution? It has set aside the construction put upon the Constitution by those who framed it; and for the rest, let Mr. Douglas