Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/265

Rh command on the one side and of absolute obedience on the other impressed themselves strongly on his mind, it was not his fault. So he was elected President, and suddenly transferred to the complex duties of the most responsible civil position of this Republic. If his temper is not such as to shake off the force of life-long habits with ease; if it is not supple enough to accommodate itself to a position no longer one of undivided power and responsibility, it may be called his misfortune; but let it not, by a confidence beyond reasonable bounds, become the misfortune of the American people. Confidence, is your cry? In his cradle every American has learned to repeat by heart the grand old watchword, “Vigilance is the price of liberty.” Have the people so utterly forgotten it? But if the people had forgotten it, we as the guardians of the rights and liberties of the people, have no right to forget it. In view of a flagrant infraction of the Constitution of the Republic, of a usurpation of power, we have no right to be lulled by the confidence game.

Sir, it was with astonishment and mortification that I heard the just criticism passed by the Senator from Massachusetts upon the President's act denounced as a blow struck at the Republican party! The Republican party! What, sir, is Ulysses S. Grant the Republican party? Is the San Domingo scheme the Republican cause? Is that most preposterous and dangerous doctrine, that the President may acquire the war-making power by a sleight-of-hand, the Republican platform? Republican Senators would do well to pause before they commit themselves on so fatal a position. If it has come to this, if you really could make the people of the country believe that fidelity to the Constitution and republican government, that hostility to the San Domingo scheme and to usurpation, means hostility to the Republican party,