Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/495

Rh American people. And finally, upon the grave of iniquity, will grow the flower of peace, that true and enduring peace of common liberty and rights mutually respected.

What do the Democrats offer us for this? Look at their platform. Indeed, it promises you peace, but before that peace is to come they mean to go through some preliminary operations. And what are they? A trifle. The reconstruction measures of Congress, the laws of the land, are only to be trampled in the dust. The Southern State governments are only to be dispersed by force of arms. The Senate of the United States is only to be coerced into submission, so General Blair tells us, and all this to put all political power in the Southern States again into the hands of the whites of the South, an overwhelming majority of whom were active participants in the rebellion, and life-long enemies of free-labor society, based upon equal rights. These are the Democratic preliminaries of peace. Indeed! Is this all? And do not say that I exaggerate; for General Blair's letter, by which he secured his nomination, is but the logical construction of the Democratic platform. What can it mean, that denunciation of the reconstruction measures of Congress as unconstitutional, revolutionary and void, if it does not mean that the results of these measures are to be set aside at any price, even at the price of a forcible revulsion! Trample into the dust the laws! Disperse the Southern State governments at the point of the bayonet! Restore the late rebels to power in their States by force! Compel the Senate to submit! Look at it calmly and dispassionately. This is not a quiet legislative process. For this there is but one name—it is a counter-revolution in the fullest sense of the term. Do you know what that signifies? Look into the history of the world. Counter revolutions mean revenge. They are the explosion of resentments long laid up; of hate and vindictiveness