Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/414

380 impossible for them to subvert or impair any of the results of the war, or to violate any of the obligations the Republic had taken upon herself. This appeared so reasonable, and, in fact, so absolutely a dictate of common-sense, that no man with any pretensions to patriotism or statesmanship objected to it.

Least of all did Andrew Johnson object to it. No man insisted more strenuously that the participants in the rebellion must be punished and stripped of all political power and social influence, and that the government of the States, as well as of the Nation, must be confided exclusively to the tried and ever-faithful friends of the Republic. Nay, he was so fierce and radical in those days that many of us began to be seriously alarmed lest, by shedding the blood of too many victims, by too severe exactions, by too merciless and sweeping a proscription, he offend the humane spirit of this age, and cast a shadow upon the fair escutcheon of this Republic. We have learned to know him better by this time. Nobody fears that he will hang too many traitors now. He tells us that he is going the round of the circle, and is just now at the other end; and we have every reason to believe it. But let that pass.

Cast a look back upon the days immediately following the close of the war—those days of promise! How easy was it then to accomplish all that would have saved the Nation from the throes of the struggle we are to-day engaged in! Then the people of the rebel States had not yet rallied from the torpor of the defeat. Far from thinking of another fight, they thought of nothing but of the necessity of submission. In tremulous anxiety they awaited the verdict of the conqueror. They expected nothing better than that we should dictate the terms of peace. If anybody had told them that we would not, they would not have believed him. They dreamed