Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/434

400 Doolittle happened to be absent. The next day he took the floor declaring that he would have voted Aye had he been present, and asked the privilege of recording his vote in favor of that excellent measure. At that time it was understood that the President approved of it. A few days afterward the President vetoed the bill. Mr. Doolittle made haste to record his vote in favor of sustaining the veto and has ever since been denouncing that excellent measure as one of the abominations of the age. There is his independence of conviction! Here is Mr. Raymond. He voted for the Constitutional amendment now before the people. He expressed his hope that the President would accept it and recommend it to the Southern States for adoption. The President not long afterward declared himself against the Constitutional amendment; and we see Mr. Raymond, in his address laid before the Philadelphia Convention, inform the Southern people that they would be cowards and unworthy of freedom if they submitted to so cruel an outrage. Ah, there is virtue in the Johnson men! They resist the South? How many of the renegade Republicans are there who have not time and again given the lie to their professions of the day before, and who do not now every hour eat up their own words along with their “bread and butter”? And they are to be relied upon as the men to stem a reactionary current which they themselves have helped to set and keep in motion. If you want to know how far they are capable of sinking, look and see how far they have sunk already. When the news of the New Orleans riots and the connection of the President with that revolting butchery flashed over the country, the heart of every honest man was palpitating with indignation. Was it not then time for these fast friends of Andrew Johnson to tell him, “We have followed you so far, but we cannot go with you into deeds of blood?”