Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/415

Rh perhaps, has the selfishness of power and the grasping greed of party stood more insidiously, stubbornly and conspicuously in the way of manifest duty.

Let us take a survey of the field and trust to the evidence of our senses. The first great object of our policy should have been to renationalize the South; to revive among the Southern people feelings calculated to attach their hearts again to the fortunes of this Union; for, let us not indulge in the delusion that the holding together by force of its component parts is a basis upon which a republic can safely rest or long endure. It requires that bond which binds together the hearts of the people and not their bodies only. And to create that bond was for us the highest object of statesmanship. We read of King Frederick William II. of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great, that he was fond of occasionally cudgeling such of his subjects as displeased him. One day while walking in the streets of Berlin, he saw a man hurriedly turn a corner at his approach; the King over took him and asked, “Why did you run away from me?” “Because I was afraid of your Majesty,” replied the trembling burgher. “Well you rascal,” said the King, “do you not know that I want my subjects to love me and not to fear me?” And to produce that love, he gave him a sound drubbing. Such methods of creating sentimental attachments may have passed more than a century ago in a despotic kingdom, but in a country like this love is not inspired by caresses of that kind. And even in Prussia they have long since come to the conclusion that it requires very different methods to build up and hold together a great empire. In order to revive patriotic feeling and National attachment in the South, we had to convince the people that we were their friends and not only their conquerors, that we had their welfare at heart, and not only our advantage. Only when we made them