Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/370

350 error, the people of the United States are a multitude not unthinking. The American people are fast becoming aware that, great as the crime of rebellion is, there are other villainies beside it; that much as it may deserve punishment, there are other evils flagrant enough to demand energetic correction; that the remedy for such evils does after all not consist in the maintenance of political disabilities, and that it would be well to look behind those vociferous demonstrations of exclusive and austere patriotism to see what abuses and faults of policy they are to cover, and what rotten sores they are to disguise. The American people are fast beginning to perceive that good and honest government in the South, as well as throughout the whole country, restoring a measurable degree of confidence and contentment, will do infinitely more to revive true loyalty and a healthy National spirit, than keeping alive the resentments of the past by a useless degradation of certain classes of persons; and that we shall fail to do our duty unless we use every means to contribute our share to that end. And those, I apprehend, expose themselves to grievous disappointment, who still think that by dinning again and again in the ears of the people the old battlecries of the civil war, they can befog the popular mind as to the true requirements of the times, and overawe and terrorize the public sentiment of the country.

Sir, I am coming to a close. One word more. We have heard protests here against amnesty as a measure intended to make us forget the past and to obscure and confuse our moral appreciation of the great events of our history. No, sir; neither would I have the past forgotten, with its great experiences and teachings. Let the memory of the grand uprising for the integrity of the Republic; let those heroic deeds and sacrifices before which the power of slavery crumbled into dust, be forever held in