Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/265

Rh rebellion, instead of permitting him to fight for the Union, would have been more than folly—it would have been a crime against the Nation. To give him his freedom, then, was an act of justice not only to him, but to the American Republic.

If the rebellious slave-power had submitted, after the first six months of the war, it is possible that slavery might have had another lease of life. But its resistance being vigorous and stubborn, and not only that, its resistance being crowned with success, it became a question of life or death—the death of the Nation, or the death of slavery. Then the Government chose. It chose the life of the Nation by the death of slavery; and the revolution rolled over the treasonable institution, and crushed it wherever it found it.

Could an act which undermined the strength of the enemy, and in the same measure added to our own—could that be called diverting the war from its original purpose? Was not the object of the war to restore the Union? How then could we refrain from using for our purposes an element which was certain to contribute most powerfully to that end? Was it not the object of the war to make the Union permanent by restoring loyalty to the Union? But by what means in the world can loyalty be restored, if it is not by crushing out the element which breeds disloyalty and treason as its natural offspring?

But if it is the opinion of our opponents that it was the original object of the war to lay the North helpless at the feet of the South, then it must be admitted the war is now much perverted from its original object.

The matter stands clear in the light of experience. Every man who professes to be for the Union, and shows any tenderness for an agency which is bound to destroy the Union, has in his heart a dark corner into which the spirit of true loyalty has not yet penetrated. And on the