Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/500

466 or have compensation for them in money. Will the National debt be safe? Already we hear it denounced as an accursed debt, contracted in the unholy cause of oppression, and you can not read the Democratic platform with an unprejudiced mind without seeing in its financial propositions the hideous design of repudiation grinning out between every two words. Will you say that this is mere speculation? I do not speak of things that will, but that have been already threatened and attempted. Will you say that the Senate will stand in the way? General Blair tells you plainly that the Senate will be compelled to submit, and the late rebels proclaim, with fierce exultation, that they stand ready to respond to another appeal to arms. What safeguard then of free labor; what obligation of the National honor will be safe? The counter-revolution is ready to roll over them all with the force of an avalanche, and nothing is required to set it in motion but that you should put power into the hands of those who are ready to commence the terrible work. If the Democratic platform means anything, it means this. This is its logic. It can mean nothing else.

Is this a promise of peace? The threatened overthrow of all the most glorious results of this grand period of our history, an attempt to disgrace the American name in the eyes of all mankind by the spoliation of the National creditor, the power of the Republic wielded by the most turbulent elements in the land—a reign of greed and revenge—can that be peace? You ask me whether I think that they can ultimately succeed in all they contemplate? No; thank Heaven—it cannot be; not as if the desire were wanting, but I am confident, as long as but one spark of love of liberty, of honesty, of self-respect, of National pride, is alive in the hearts of the American people, such enormities cannot ultimately succeed. Even if the American people should now so far forget themselves