Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/435

Rh But what did they do? Not one of them had spirit enough to condemn openly what must have sickened their inmost hearts. With indecent haste they rushed forward to approve the President's acts and to whitewash the assassins of Louisiana. Nay, for men who are capable of so monstrous a self-debasement, there is no depth of infamy into which they will not be ready to descend.

And thus the reactionary movement rushes on. The atrocities it has already achieved, after having won the machinery of the State governments, I have described to you. I have endeavored to unfold before you its prospective program, to be carried when the late rebel States are unconditionally restored to power in the National Government. And now we behold the President of the United States prostituting the whole power of his office, by using it as a machinery of intimidation and bribery, putting up at auction the patronage of the Government, the price to be paid in consciences, and leaving, as he himself says, his Presidential dignity behind him—indeed, he leaves it so far behind that the two will never again come together—promenading his bad grammar and clownish egotism across the country to bully a brave and noble people into acquiescence; behind him the encouraging shouts of the rebel States; around him all the disloyal elements of the North, which, during the war, conspired for the overthrow of the Republic, together with a bevy of political hirelings, who carry their principles in their pockets, and are ready to sell out, along with their better convictions, the whole great future of their country; and the whole of this disgusting company, President, rebels, Copperheads and renegades, vying with each other in threats of another civil war if their nefarious designs are successfully resisted.

Such is the situation of affairs at this moment; such the difficulties which surround us; such the dangers which