Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/273

Rh is indeed very obliging. It can hardly have recovered from its first exhaustion, and now it tells us kindly that it is ready to exhaust itself once more. It would be uncivil to accept the sacrifice. We will take the good-will for the deed and dispense with it. Still, I consider it an evidence of appreciative judgment on the part of his friends to have selected just that candidate for a task which can be performed only in his characteristic manner; setting out with a grand flourish of promises and coming back with a grander flourish of apologies.

Restore the Union “as it was”! Did you ever hear of a great war that left a country in the same condition in which it had found it? Did you ever hear of a great revolution which left the political and social relations of the contending parties as they had been before the struggle? And there are visionaries who believe that relations which rested upon mutual confidence can be restored when that confidence has been drowned in a sea of blood. Do you really think you can ever restore the confidence “as it was” between two companions, one of whom has been detected in an attempt to rob and murder the other in his sleep? By no process of reasoning can you prove—nay, not even in the wildest flights of your imagination can you conceive the possibility that the relations between a dominant and an enslaved race can be placed upon the ancient footing, when two hundred thousand men of the enslaved race have been in arms against their masters, and in arms, too, at the call of the supreme authority of the Republic. You cannot leave them such as they are; you cannot permit them even to remember that they have fought for us as well as for themselves, without following up the events which made them what they are, to the full consummation of the freedom of the race. And, on the other hand, you cannot keep the race in bondage without reducing those who are now fighting for their own and our