Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/423

Rh refusing even to share it with them. Fidelity to the South—that is, participation in the rebellion—has become an absolute requisite for political trust, influence and power; identification with the National cause, a badge of disgrace; and the tried loyalists of the South, the same men into whose hands the President promised to place the work of reconstruction, to the exclusion of rebels, find themselves rudely ostracised from political life.

Nor does the reaction stop there. Hardly had the President's policy had time to be understood when a malignant spirit of hostility began to follow the Northern emigrant in all the relations of life. Every man was spotted who refused to sell his loyal principles along with his calico; and the Southern Union men, in the same measure as they had been faithful to the Government, were sneered at, howled at, spit upon as traitors to the Southern cause, and soon found themselves the outcasts of Southern society. And presently the torch and the pistol came again into play. Houses were burned to smoke out men of loyal sentiments. Democratic committees gave, and are now giving, men who fought under the flag of the country, notice to quit under penalty of death; and to the many cowardly murders committed in secret are now added wholesale butcheries in broad daylight and under the inspiration of the constituted authorities. Did you listen to tales of horror and woe coming from the lips of the faithful men now here appealing to your sympathy? And why are they here? Because, as even one of the President's court organs sneeringly asserted—and certainly Andrew Johnson himself would not impeach the veracity of his own mouthpiece—because this very convention of Southern Unionists would not have been permitted to meet in any one of the rebel States! Here they are—the men who most faithfully clung to the Republic in the hour of her greatest