Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/25

Rh force and restriction, other agencies than a continued protection by force and restriction—a system uncongenial to our principles of government—had to be relied upon for its development and perpetuation.

Public opinion had to be won by a generous and conciliatory policy. The people of the late slaveholding States had to be cut loose from their past, with its painful memories, as well as its peculiar desires and aspirations. The most efficient measures to this end were naturally those which were best calculated to make the Southern people measurably satisfied with their changed condition, and to identify their interests, aspirations and hopes with the new order of things. Their thoughts had to be diverted from the past in order to be directed to the future.

To divert their thoughts from the past two things were necessary: first, to fortify the results of the war in the political institutions of the country so firmly as to make all attempts at a reaction appear utterly hopeless; and then to do away as soon as possible with those restrictive measures which are felt by them as a common grievance, irritatingly reminding them of the past. And nothing can be better calculated to direct their thoughts to the future than to dispose as rapidly as possible of all political questions that have sprung from the war, and to clear the track for the new issues which are of equal interest to all of us, without any reference to our former dissensions and conflicts. The attention of the people once absorbed by new topics of general interest, controversies connected with the war will gradually drift into the background; people will meet upon new fields, irrespective of their former relations; the new order of things will insensibly and irresistibly grow into the daily habits and ways of thinking of the masses, and the desire of a reaction will gradually disappear in the absorbing activity for the furtherance of new objects. That this process may not work itself out as