Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/44

24 families were divided against themselves. Did he desire to see that son or brother or cousin killed? Probably not. Did he therefore sympathize with him? The registering officers were to determine that to their own satisfaction. “Sympathy with those exciting rebellion.” It was charged that the Democratic party was exciting rebellion. Did sympathy with Democrats constitute the disqualifying crime? The registrars might construe it so, and there was no appeal from their decision. And if they did, where was the limit to arbitrary disfranchisement?

You might say that this is running things to a fine point. But what was there to prevent it? If the registering officers had in all cases been high-minded, conscientious men, they would have put a liberal construction upon the law. But were they? Facts will tell. I know of faithful and consistent Union men, unfortunate enough to have had sons or relatives who insisted upon joining the rebels. They endeavored to keep them back; but, striving in vain to hold them, gave them a woolen shirt or a pair of socks, and not denying it, were disfranchised for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Others expressed the wish that their relatives in the rebel army would return home safely, and were disfranchised for sympathizing with those engaged in rebellion. I know of scores of men who served three or four years in the Union Army, some having lost arms or legs in the service, disfranchised for having expressed sympathy with those exciting rebellion, and having used the incriminating expressions in some cases before they put on the blue jacket, in others long after the war was over. Nay, I know of the case of an old abolitionist in Linn county, Missouri, who had made emancipation speeches in 1861 and all through the war, and who was disfranchised in 1868 for having made certain remarks in 1865 and 1866 in favor of the so-called peace policy then agitated by some political leaders in Missouri.