Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/193

Rh with dogged stubbornness, your fatal infatuation? Why not manfully swing round into the grand march of progressive humanity? You say it cannot be done to-day. Can it be done to-morrow? Will it be easier twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful increase of the negro population will have aggravated the evils of slavery a hundredfold, and with it the difficulties of its extinction? Did you ever think of this? The final crisis, unless prevented by timely reform, will come with the inexorable certainty of fate, the more terrible the longer it is delayed. Will you content yourself with the criminal words, “after me the deluge”? Is that the inheritance you mean to leave to coming generations—an inheritance of disgrace, crime, blood, destruction? Hear me, slaveholders of America! If you have no sense for the right of the black, no appreciation of your own interests, I entreat, I implore you, have at least pity on your children!

I hear the silly objection that your sense of honor forbids you to desert your cause. Sense of honor! Imagine a future generation standing around the tombstone of the bravest of you, and reading the inscription: “Here lies a gallant man who fought and died for the cause—of human slavery.” What will the verdict be? His very progeny will disown him, and exclaim, “He must have been either a knave or a fool!” There is not one of you who, if he could rise from the dead a century hence, would not gladly exchange his epitaph for that of the meanest of those who were hung at Charlestown.

Is it, then, so dishonorable to give up the errors of yesterday for the truths of to-day?—to prevent future disasters by timely reforms? Since when has it ceased to be the highest glory to sacrifice one's prejudices and momentary advantages upon the altar of the common weal? But those who seek their glory in stubbornly resisting what is glorious, must find their end in inglorious misery.