Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/494

460 the carpet-bagger will soon be welcomed in the South for the new ideas and energies he brings, and all sores will presently be forgotten in a new common prosperity. Such is the peace which the firmness of the loyal people promises and which it is bound to achieve.

Wade Hampton tells us that this will be for the South “the peace of the graveyard.” Aye, Wade Hampton, it will be a graveyard in one sense, and we mean to dig the graves broad and deep. In that graveyard will be buried the pro-slavery aristocracy of the South, with its foolish fancies and its grasping pretensions of superiority and dominion. There will be buried the false civilization of the South, which elevated the few upon the neck of the oppressed many. There will be buried that most abominable of all heresies, that true liberty consists in the right of one class of men to deprive of their rights another class; and let us hope that the corpse of the Democratic party will be laid by its side. There will be buried the irrepressible conflict, which, during so many years, has disturbed the peace of the country and swallowed up a million of lives and untold millions of treasure. There will be buried out of sight and memory, this age of blood and tears, of violence and injustice, to make room for a new and better order of things. A graveyard, indeed; but from those graves will spring up free labor with its abundant fields and busy workshops. There will spring up the school-house for all the children of the people to join all classes of society together for mutual improvement in the onward march of a common civilization. There will spring up that progressive public spirit which will recognize that one part of the people will best promote its own interest by aiding in the advancement of all others. There will spring up true loyalty to the Republic, for then the interests and institutions most cherished by the South will be just those it has in common with the rest of the