Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/497

Rh Wisconsin. The stern business of the hour he would leave to men of stronger will and fiercer disposition. He would be like potter's clay in their hands. And certainly men of stronger will and fiercer disposition would not be wanting around him.

There is General Blair. True, his lucubrations on negro supremacy are ludicrous enough, but it will not do to speak lightly of his ability. There is power in his organization. He has that stuff in him which, developed by a high moral sense, might have made him a Brutus, but which, turned into the channel of unprincipled ambition and bitter vindictiveness, is well apt to make him a Catiline. He is essentially a revolutionary character; a mind fertile of expedients, a reckless determination which stops at nothing, and all the dangerous incentives springing from a situation in which he has all to gain and nothing to lose. I can hardly conceive of a counter-revolutionary leader more daring, reckless and dangerous than he. Preston and Forrest knew well what they were doing when they proposed and seconded his nomination. What will Horatio Seymour be with such a man at his elbow? Such a man will bend or break him like a reed across his knees.

But there would be even stronger powers than Blair ready and eager to take the counter-rebellion in their own hands. Who made the Democratic platform and the nominations? Vallandigham, Wade Hampton, Preston, Forrest. Do you know them? Did you not hear the old rebel yell which greeted the counter-revolutionary program in the New York Convention? Do you not hear it now ringing over the Southern country? Do you not hear the leaders of the late rebellion openly proclaim that a Democratic victory will be a victory of the “lost cause”; that their will must again rule the land, and that as they have fought once they are ready to fight again?