Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/413

Rh field for many years, and from whom I now, with great regret, find myself separated. To the attacks with which some of them endeavor to overwhelm me, I have but one answer. I have never considered my party the supreme arbiter of my sense of duty; I have always seen in politics aims far higher than the success of the organization to which I belonged; and I have never believed that a party, even if it be my own, has a right to stand in the way of the public good. This has throughout my public life been my supreme rule of action, and I trust it always will be, to whatever consequences it may lead as to my political fortunes. On this ground I shall appeal to your sober judgment.

When I was honored with a seat in the Senate of the United States, I expected to support the Administration which then came into power. The tasks it was called to perform were of unusual importance. The civil war was over. Its logical results, the abolition of slavery and the organization of free-labor society in the South, were just being reduced to political form and embedded in the Constitution of the Republic. It remained to fortify those results by reconciling to them the minds of the Southern people, so that their development could be securely left to the working of local self-government instead of the rule of force. To this end, a wise and generous policy, appealing to the best instincts of human nature, was required to assuage the passions and animosities the war had left behind it, and to make those who had been overcome in the conflict of arms, as much as possible satisfied with the new order of things. During a great period of public danger the Constitutional restrictions of power had not infrequently yielded to commanding necessity; the law had been overrun by the exigencies of the moment, and the people had become accustomed to a government of force. It was necessary to restore