Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/476

442 to the conclusion that something has happened which can not be denied. If that is progress, the Democratic party has shown something like a progressive spirit. If it goes on at that rate, it will, at the end of the nineteenth century, recognize the fact that a locomotive is a better engine of transportation than a wheelbarrow, and a steamboat a swifter conveyance than Noah's ark. But even the poor acknowledgment of great consummations contained in the New York platform is already fiercely repudiated by the Southern Democrats, and it is loudly proclaimed there that the right of secession holds as good as ever, and that if slavery has been abolished, it was a great wrong, and ought to be remedied. So you see the true spirit of the Democracy which lives in the South stands aghast at the folly of this progressive feat, and confidently proclaims that those are fools who think it could improve. It is this Democratic doctrine of true liberty that has been the great curse of the Republic. It has poisoned our political life by leading the popular mind into channels of vicious logic, and debauching the hearts of the multitude with its artful defense of wrong. It has made man the enemy of man, and thus produced an irrepressible conflict. It has stirred up all the bitter contests of the last thirty years, and plunged the country into the bloodiest civil wars, and it will do so again unless we at last cut out and eject this prolific abomination from our political system. In the war the first cut was made, and our military governments only followed up the surgical operation.

I would be the last man on earth to sound the praise of military rule, as such. I would denounce it even in this case, had it not been the necessary means of transition from the reign of wrong to the reign of right. To give security and order to Southern society in a period of chaotic confusion; to render possible the appeal which was taken to the whole Southern people, without