Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/455

Rh people. Those are the sources of the irrepressible conflict. The slave-power demanded supreme control in our National Government, which it justly deemed necessary for its existence. Free-labor society justly refused to yield that supreme control, because such a surrender would have been incompatible with its highest interests. The irrepressible conflict ripened into a crisis, and the civil war ensued. It was, therefore, the logical tendency of the war, as carried on by free labor, to stop the sources from which the conflict had sprung—that is, to destroy slavery and to break the power of aristocratic class government in the South. That logic was followed; slavery was abolished; but by the mere overthrow of the rebellion and the abolition of slavery, only the destructive part of the great problem was solved.

Now, something was to be put in the place of slavery; a new organization of a positive character was to be given to Southern society, so as to prevent the return of aristocratic class government with its evil consequences. Here commenced the constructive, creative part of the problem to be solved. What new organization of society was that to be? If it was to prevent the growing up again of local interests and institutions antagonistic to those of the rest of the American people; if it was to obviate the recurrence of irrepressible conflicts; if it was to lay the foundation of a durable and solid National peace, it had to be such as to secure entire harmony between the social and political institutions of the different sections of the country and the controlling principles of our democratic system of government. What are these controlling principles? We find them laid down in the grand old charter of American liberty—“All men are created equal, and have certain inalienable rights,” and “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” What does this mean in its practical application? It means that