Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/440

406 international conflict, has a right to protect himself against immediate and prospective danger? Is it not the very height of insanity to say that the Government of the United States has no right to provide for the future security of the Republic because the defeated rebels regain all their rights at the moment of their failure, and by the very fact of their defeat? Here is Vattel, book 3, section 201, 44, 45:

“When the conqueror has subdued a hostile nation, he may, if prudence so require, render her incapable of doing mischief with the same ease in the future. . . . If the safety of the State lies at stake, our precaution and foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we delay to avert our ruin until it becomes inevitable? . . . An injury gives a right to provide for our future safety by depriving the unjust aggressor of the means of injuring us.”

Would it not be an act of folly unprecedented in the history of nations to neglect so absolutely necessary a precaution in our case? Is it possible that men with any pretensions to sanity should attempt to deny the justice of a principle so self-evident; a principle equally approved by common-sense and public law? That President Johnson should ever have taken so absurd a position I can explain only upon one theory. He frequently tells us in his unfortunately not unfrequent speeches that he commenced his political career as a village alderman, at Greenville, Tennessee, and that he then rose, step by step, until he reached the Presidency of the United States. It seems, when the President finds himself in a tangle, he is still in the habit of applying to the Dogberry of Greenville for a Constitutional argument.

But the President's own acts give the lie to his theories. Has he not himself imposed upon the rebel States conditions precedent to readmission? Did he not order them