Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/463

Rh that class, too, the same which in its majority had made the rebellion for the perpetuation of slavery; but Congress, according to good democratic doctrine, appealed to the whole people of the South—high and low, white and black—to give themselves a political organization in which free labor might be safe, and to take their governments into their own hands. Then the Southern people went to work to rebuild their State governments, and no sooner was the political organization of the State perfected according to the conditions prescribed, and the local authorities fairly constituted, than Congress withdrew the protecting and controlling arm of the military power and turned the affairs of the reconstructed State again into the broad channel of self-government. This, then, is the sum and substance of the reconstruction policy of Congress. These are the principles upon which it rests, these the means it has employed, these the ends it has designed to reach. Thus eight of the late rebel States have been restored to their old places in the Union. The three yet behind will regain their places in a short period of time, and the great end, so devoutly wished and so laboriously struggled for, the restoration of the American Union, upon the basis of universal liberty, impartial justice and equal rights, will be a grandly consummated fact. Upon this we offer peace to the country, and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we confidently and proudly appeal to the enlightened judgment of the American people and the sympathies of civilized mankind.

If there is a Democrat within the reach of my voice who will only throw off, for a single moment, the shackles of party prejudice, and whose ear is still open to the voice of conscience and reason, I appeal to him. Let him look at what has been done with an unclouded eye. Are not the principles upon which this work of reconstruction is based reasonable, sound, just and eminently democratic?