Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/363

Rh displeasure. Why this? Here we have a large number of men of local standing who in some cases may have been leaders on a small scale, but most of whom were drawn into the whirl of the revolutionary movement just like the rest of the Southern population. If you accept the proposition that it will be well and wise to permit the intelligence of the country to participate in the management of the public business, the exclusion of just these people will appear especially inappropriate because their local influence might be made peculiarly beneficial; and if you exclude these persons, whose number is considerable, you tell just that class of people whose coöperation might be made most valuable, that their coöperation is not wanted, for the reason that, according to the meaning and intent of your system of disabilities, public affairs are no business of theirs. You object that they are more guilty than the rest. Suppose they are—and in many cases I am sure they are only apparently so—but if they were not guilty of any wrong, they would need no amnesty. Amnesty is made for those who bear a certain degree of guilt. Or would you indulge here in the solemn farce of giving pardon only to those who are presumably innocent? You grant your amnesty that it may bear good fruit; and if you do it for that purpose, then do not diminish the good fruit it may bear by leaving unplanted the most promising soil upon which it may grow.

A few words now about the second section of the bill before you, which imposes upon those who desire to have the benefit of amnesty the duty of taking, before some public officer, an oath to support the Constitution, that oath to be registered, the lists to be laid before Congress and to be preserved in the office of the Secretary of State. Sir, I ask you, can you or any one tell me what practical good is to be accomplished by a provision like this? You