Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/138

118 fills my soul with delight when I see events preparing themselves which will lead the whole continent north of us into our arms. That will indeed be a natural, congenial and happy association. And the day when that great consummation takes place this Republic will be stronger than ever before; stronger, for the very seat of her empire, the center of gravity, will then be more firmly fixed than ever under the healthful influences of the northern sky. But beware of every addition in that quarter where the very sun hatches out the serpent's eggs of danger to our republican institutions; beware until by further development and accretion the preponderance of northern civilization becomes so firmly fixed that nothing in the world can shake it.

When that moment will come, whether it will ever come, I know not; but of one thing I am sure, that moment has not come yet. And I must confess it is incomprehensible to me how, in days like ours, when these legislative halls so frequently resound with propositions for the enlargement of the military power,—propositions sprung indeed from honorable sympathies and motives, but at the mere sound of which the Fathers of the Republic would have stood aghast—and those propositions prompted by the very southern distemper I have described; and when the most exciting struggles we witness here have just this meaning, how we may maintain the integrity of our republican institutions against the pressure of the necessities growing out of that distemper—I say it is incomprehensible to me how, under such circumstances and with that voice of warning ringing in our ears, a plan to augment all these dangers a hundredfold can find a single advocate upon the floor of the American Senate.

I am asked, are we to turn our backs upon the people of that region entirely? Are we to waive them off with cold indifference? Are we to have no heart for our brothers