Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/28

8 questionable whether rebels and Unionists would be able to live peaceably together on the same soil. Under such circumstances a State constitution was adopted which excluded from the right of suffrage all who had been connected with the rebellion either by act or by sympathy.

But while in no State the struggle between rebels and Unionists had been fiercer, in no State the animosities of the war died out more rapidly and more completely. Under the influence of restored peace the material development of the State at once took a new and vigorous start. For some time outrages were committed by the bushwhacking tribe; soon they disappeared. For some time, even until within the last two years to some extent, social and business ostracism was kept up by the two parties; gradually the genial habits of good neighborship revived. The people of Missouri became again throughout an orderly and law-abiding people, until at the commencement of the present year the governor could proclaim in his message that there was not a county in the State where the sheriff could not at any time obtain a posse to aid him in the execution of the laws, and that life and the rights of property were as safe in Missouri as in any State of the Union. And never was there a word of praise more richly deserved. The governor might have said far more without going beyond the truth.

From other parts of the country reports have reached you of rebel riots, excesses and outrages; of attempts to nullify the freedom of the late slave; of those wild commotions which usually follow suppressed rebellions. I will not here investigate how much of exaggeration there may have been in some of these stories; but tell me whether within the last two years even the attempt at such a story has come from Missouri at all! You might travel over my State far and wide in all directions, and you would behold with your own eyes the irresistible evidences