Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/224

190 North, we lost caste in the eyes of those who were our natural friends, in the same measure as the conflict assumes the character of an anti-slavery war, even our opponents are compelled to do us justice. Of this I have the most striking illustrations before me. No sooner had the act of Congress, liberating the slaves of rebel masters, and the instructions issued to military commanders, relative to the reception of fugitives, become known in Europe, than the indifference of the liberal masses gave room to new hopes and good wishes for our cause. These acts are constantly paraded by our friends as indications of the general tendency of the war, and in this they find a ready excuse for the restraints temporarily placed upon civil rights and liberties; and even our opponents, after having for some time professed doubt as to the truthfulness of the news, are at last compelled to concede, that the ultimate extinction of slavery would indeed be a most desirable object to be accomplished. But at the same time the emphatic desire is added [sic] by the first, that such measures ought to assume a more general scope, while the second, pretending that they proceed from our necessities and not from principle, predict they never will. All these opinions are to be traced in numberless and striking manifestations of the public press.

It is my profound conviction that, as soon as the war becomes distinctly one for and against slavery, public opinion will be so strongly, so overwhelmingly in our favor, that in spite of commercial interests or secret spites no European Government will dare to place itself, by declaration or act, upon the side of a universally condemned institution. Our enemies know that well, and we may learn from them. While their agents carefully conceal from the eyes of Europeans their only weak point, their attachment to slavery, ought we to aid them in hiding with equal care our only strong point, our opposition