Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/430

396 Convention, will hardly be capable of refusing to Southern heroes the pittance of fifty or sixty millions a year, whatever Northern taxpayers may think of it.

Finally, we arrive at the National debt. That the Southern people should be loath to pay the cost of the whipping they have received is natural enough. They cannot reasonably be expected to do so willingly. Such is human nature, and such is certainly Southern human nature. Let that Southern human nature be restored to power and influence in the National Government, and what reasonable man will doubt that every possible impediment will be thrown in the way of all legislation necessary to provide for the satisfaction of the just claims of our National creditors, unless we consent to assume the rebel debt also? I do not pretend to say that the masses of the South would be in favor of paying the rebel debt. What they would be most in favor of would be to pay no debt at all. But the creditors of the late Confederate Government would indeed be very much in favor of giving some value to their Confederate bonds, and being the most influential men of the South, they will not find it difficult to persuade the Southern masses that if any debt is to be paid at all the Confederate debt is entitled to payment as well as any other, if not even more. Who doubts that the people lately in rebellion will be very well convinced of this. Then operations will commence for the assumption of the rebel debt. The Southern members of Congress will be an almost solid unit for it. It will be necessary to buy up Northerners enough to make a majority. Do you think this impossible? The Confederate debt is estimated at about four billion dollars. Suppose the Confederate creditors combine and set one hundred million, or two hundred million, or five hundred million dollars, of their Confederate bonds apart as a general corruption fund; suppose an agent of the