Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/448

414 and good-will to all men is the fondest wish of our heart and we are anxious to give and secure it even to the bitterest of our enemies as soon as they show an honest willingness to grant it to all of our friends.

The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, speak, too, of magnanimity. Magnanimity! What magnanimity is this which consists in forgiveness to the Union's enemies and forgetfulness to the Union's friends? which puts the dagger into the hands of the former with which to strike at the lives of the latter? Magnanimity, indeed! It is mercy in the prostituting embrace of treason; it is persecution and murder in the garb of grace.

Are the American people sunk so deeply—can they be so completely lost to all sense of decency and honor—that such an insult to their common-sense, and to the generous impulses of their hearts, should be offered to them with impunity? Or is it possible that those who but yesterday would have defied the world in arms, should to-day, with craven pusillanimity, recoil before the difficulties which the revived hopes of defeated traitors oppose to their onward march? I appeal to your understandings. Let the clear, practical eye of the American be turned upon the task immediately before us, and see how simple it is. You have but to speak and the dangers which surround you will vanish. Let the National will rise up from the ballot-boxes of November with a strength which laughs at resistance, and with a clearness of utterance which admits of no doubt, and the reaction which now surges against you like a sea of angry waves will play around your feet like the harmless rivulet set running by an April shower. Even Andrew Johnson's damaged intellect will quickly perceive that, although he may succeed in buying up a few forlorn wretches, it is a hopeless enterprise to debauch the great heart of the American