Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/290

270 your feelings and views of duty have been very different from theirs?

Is it not well, then, that in clearing away the wreck of past struggles, we should, with them, clear away those resentments which were born of the passions of those struggles, and which should not survive them? Is it not well that we should endeavor to become just to one another in our hearts? Is it not time that, upon the basis of the new order of things, evolved by a great conflict, we should join hands again for the achievement of a common National future?

But I am told that the National Government had no Constitutional power to do what it did in the way of reconstruction; that it resorted to revolutionary proceedings, and so on. Yes, that is, in a certain sense, my view of the case also. But were those proceedings not the offspring of a revolutionary situation, into which, in spite of ourselves, the civil war had thrown us? And has it not always, in history, been characteristic of revolutionary situations that the accomplishment of necessary ends was considered of far greater importance than the absolute regularity of the means employed? I would certainly not admit all that was done during and immediately after the war as valid precedents, to be followed in times of peace. But suppose you do call all that has been achieved a great revolution, is it the part of wise men to deny that revolutions also have their rightful place in history, and to reject the results evolved by a great revolution as such? Would it, in our case, be wise in the face of the fact that those very results, although rejected on account of their doubtful origin, would then finally still have to be restored by a painful and dangerous operation? Will it not be infinitely more prudent and patriotic to accept those results as accomplished facts, and to make the best of them, instead of venturing into the confusion, agony and distress