Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/503

Rh more. Brave as the Southern people may be, they would scarcely have dared to raise their hands in rebellion against this Republic had they not been assured that the people of the North would not fight, or, if they did, that there would be Northern people enough to rise in aid of the rebellion. You, Northern Democrats, caused them to indulge in this fatal delusion; you goaded them on to the path of rebellion, blood and destruction. But, still more. In 1864, when the back of the rebellion was already broken, and when speedy submission might have spared us many grievous sacrifices, you, Northern Democrats, then declared the war a failure on our side; you then encouraged the Southern people to persevere, to hope, to fight on. And thus the slaughter and destruction continued. But still more. At last the rebellion was vanquished, and the Southern people lay prostrate at the feet of the conqueror exhausted, impoverished, lacerated, bleeding. So far your friendship had brought them. There was but one way for them to rise to new life, peace and prosperity. It was by giving up all those old wild dreams of sectional power; by abandoning all thought of the possibility of a reaction; by accepting readily all the new order of things would bring; by devoting themselves, without looking back, to the reparation of their losses; by averting their eyes from the past and turning them full upon the future. And who will deny that after the first stunning effect of their defeat such was their disposition, and that this disposition would have been strengthened by a firm and uncompromising attitude on the part of the North? Thus their wounds might have been quickly healed, and their life restored to health and vigor. But what did you do, Northern Democrats? No sooner was there a chance for their regeneration than you hastened again to pour into their minds the poison of false hope. You stimulated their pride with flattery. You stirred up their feverish