Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/454

420 must be trampled in the dust, the army must be sent into the South, and disperse the newly erected State governments with the bayonet, and the Senate of the United States must be compelled to submit to our dictation. We offer peace to the people, not on the basis of accomplished results, of an existing state of things, but the existing state of things must first be overturned, by force of arms if need be, and upon its ruins we shall commence again to build up something which, after new struggles and conflicts, shall give peace to the country.” This, as its platform and the manifestoes of its candidates clearly show, is the purpose of the Democratic party. It is evident that the Republicans, placing themselves upon the ground of results already accomplished, have the advantage in argument; for the Democrats will not persuade the prudent and patriotic people of this Republic to overthrow that which exists and to launch into new struggles, troubles and uncertainties, unless they clearly show that that which has been accomplished is intrinsically bad, and that they have something better to put in its place. Permit me, then, first, to pass in review the reconstruction policy carried out by Congress, and the objections to it brought forward by the Democratic party.

If a true, durable peace was to issue from the struggles of our civil war, it was above all things necessary that the causes of strife should be removed. But what were these causes? They consisted in two facts. First, that in the South there existed a peculiar interest and institution—namely, slavery and the aristocratic class government inseparable from involuntary labor, which in its very nature was antagonistic to the fundamental principles upon which our democratic system of government rests; and, secondly, that the Southern people cherished that institution and interest peculiar to themselves far above those they had in common with the rest of the American