Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/140

120 I understand him to mean that.

The Senator should not find it difficult to understand my meaning as I express it.

Mr. President, I have been interrupted so often that I have spoken much longer than I intended. I beg the pardon of the Senate for having taxed their kind patience. I am coming to a close. There was a time, sir, when the American people were permitted to indulge in the exuberant dreams of youth, laughing away all suggestions of danger and delighting in those eagle flights of fancy, which showed to them nothing but continents and seas to be conquered, a world to be ruled, an infinite, incomprehensible destiny to be fulfilled. The American people have by this time outgrown their boyhood. The American people have come of age; and it is time for them, after having met with great disappointments and passed through tremendous dangers and trials, to consider calmly what their true and peculiar forces are, to what tasks those forces are best suited, upon what ground they can be made most valuable, in what direction we can employ them most advantageously to ourselves and to mankind and in what way the American Republic can achieve the most useful, and therefore the most glorious position in the history of the human race. Our power has grown great, and with it our responsibilities. We should consider them well, and settle down upon a rational plan of life. It rests with our decision to achieve the greatest success or the most lamentable failure in history; for never were opportunities more magnificent. The Republic stands at the present moment like Hercules at the parting of the ways; one running southward, pointing to a repetition of the Roman empire, with all its magnitude, its power, its splendor, its riches, its demoralization, its civil commotions, its military government and its inevitable decay; the other pointing northward, toward the