Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/177

Rh the territories, are to be abandoned; the opposition to the conquest and annexation of foreign countries, out of which more slave States can be formed, is to be given up; the economic policy of the planting interest, to the exclusion of the encouragement of home industry, is to become the ruling policy of the country.

This is the Southern solution of the “irrepressible conflict.”

This program possesses at least the merit of logic—the logic of slavery and despotism against the logic of free labor and liberty. The issue is plainly made up. Free labor is summoned to submit to the measures which slavery deems necessary for its perpetuation. We are called upon to adapt our laws and systems of policy, and the whole development of our social organization, to the necessities and interests of slavery. We are summoned to surrender. Let us for a moment judge the people of the free States by the meanest criterion we can think of; let us apply a supposition to them, which, if applied to ourselves, we would consider an insult.

If the people of the free States were so devoid of moral sense as not to distinguish between right and wrong; so devoid of generous impulses as not to sympathize with the downtrodden and the degraded, so devoid of manly pride as to be naturally inclined to submit to everybody who is impudent enough to assume the command; tell me, even in this worst, this most disgusting of all contingencies, could free labor quietly submit to the demands of the slave power so long as it has a just appreciation of its own interests? If we cared, neither for other people's rights nor for our own dignity, can we submit as long as we care for our own pockets? Surrender the privilege of discussing our social problems without restraint! Be narrowed down to a given circle of ideas, which we shall not transgress! Do we not owe our growth, prosperity