Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/302

282 purpose not be formed? What are the difficulties in the way? Let us see.

I am asked how can you expect those who took part in the rebellion, but who are now willing to fulfil all the duties of good citizenship—how can you expect them to step voluntarily forward in such a work while as a class they are still by the system of political disabilities stigmatized as outcasts? I deeply appreciate the feeling manifested in this objection, and I have been one of those who, since the logical and legitimate results of the war were embodied in the Constitution, never lost an opportunity to denounce that system of disabilities as odious and worse than useless, and strenuously urged its abolition. I was one of those who in the State of Missouri broke through all the traditional rules of party discipline, jeopardizing all their political fortune to secure to all citizens of that State, irrespective of their attitude during the war, rights equal to those of all other citizens.

But what if, in spite of our honest efforts, we have not succeeded yet to remove all the disabilities imposed by the fourteenth amendment? Should you therefore not combine to suppress all lawless violence and to give good government to your State? Should you punish yourselves because others have so far proved unable to rise up to the level of a generous and sound statesmanship? Besides, the only objection to general amnesty still finding some response in public opinion at the North, rests upon nothing but just the occurrence of those lawless disorders and the inefficiency of local self-government at the South in suppressing them. Do you not see that if the good men of the South, overleaping party barriers, do put down those disorders, the last plausible argument against amnesty will vanish into nothingness? If there still are vindictive demagogues at the North, do you not see how you can most efficiently cross their purposes by depriving them