Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/447

Rh people to an enormous strain. The reconstruction period imposed another heavy tax upon the remaining active interest in public affairs. Having arrived at a fair promise of settlement, people, under a sense of fatigue, were inclined to let things take their course. They did not want to alarm themselves. The Constitution might be violated; the laws broken; things might be done which at other times would have provoked the fiercest indignation; now they received but a passing notice. A part of the country could be most cruelly oppressed and plundered; in another part people could be aroused only by what they encountered at their own doors. They followed the lead of party by habit and without troublesome discrimination. And in such a season of apathy could the arbitrary tendencies of the Government and the greed of politicians knit those meshes in which party and people were to be led captive.

But, fortunately, the American people sleep neither very fast nor very long. They stretched their limbs and became sensible of their fetters. It was indeed time to wake up, that the spell be broken. The people instinctively felt this and thus originated the movement which rose into action at Cincinnati. Determined men cleared with a bound the prison walls of party, and resolved to be their own masters. Thus the Cincinnati Convention came together. That convention was not the product of a mere scheme of politicians. There have been but few periods in the history of this Republic when such an enterprise was possible. It becomes possible only when the popular mind is made restless by profound discontent and an irrepressible instinct demanding a change. The Cincinnati Convention sprang from that instinct. With astonishing rapidity the movement assumed dimensions far beyond the expectations of those who first endeavored to give it shape and direction. It would not confine