Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/41

Rh and thousands of people who had never belonged to our organization and whose votes we could otherwise never have hoped for.

Am I not justified, then, in saying that the binding force of that promise was increased by value received in consideration thereof; value received, if I may use that expression, in cash down votes? And in this light that promise stood before my eyes in our State convention, when I saw it on the point of being dishonored by all the appliances of political trickery. Who will still pretend that the language I used was too strong? Whatever others may think, I considered it my duty to declare that if there were men unscrupulous enough to repudiate or evade a faithful recognition of their solemn obligations, there were also men there resolved to stand by their pledges to the last and at every hazard, to take their honor and that of their party into their hands and to carry that great measure of peace and reconciliation over the heads of the tricksters. I thought it due even to our opponents that I should let them know what the consequences would be if they persisted in the iniquity.

But, before going further, I desire to show the Senate what the character of that system of disfranchisement was upon the condemnation of which we insisted, and which our opponents by trickery and equivocation strove to preserve. I wish to call the special attention of Senators to it; for this, too, will be a somewhat valuable and interesting contribution to the history of our politics. I am sure but few if any members of this body know what disfranchisement in Missouri really was; and I must confess that I myself never fully understood it until many months after the election of 1868 I had occasion to investigate its working.

The constitution of Missouri, third section, second article, disfranchised not only those who had been in