Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/64

44 should come into power. But the elevation of just such a man as Grant will be calculated to calm the waves of excitement, and to give to our deliberations the necessary degree of equanimity.

Immediately after the close of the war the late rebels of the South were disposed to submit quietly to whatever conditions of restoration the National Government might have imposed upon them. Had that opportunity been judiciously improved the country would have been at rest long ago. By Andrew Johnson's vicious intrigues it was lost. With General Grant's elevation to power it will return. He knows the Southern people and they know him. They have been in close and lively contact, and understand one another. He has given them evidence of his unbending determination in a conflict and of his generosity after a victory. They know that when he demanded an unconditional surrender he meant it to be unconditional; they know also that he treated the vanquished with magnanimous forbearance. He has proved to them that he is well capable of achieving and following up a success, but not capable of abusing it. The people of the South will therefore have no reason to fear that he will act with the vindictive spirit of an exasperated partisan, and no reason to hope that iniquity and factious opposition will meet from him with weak indulgence. They will be convinced that they will have to submit, and they will readily submit, to a policy which has been conceived with moderation and will be adhered to with firmness. As Andrew Johnson has stirred up the most vicious elements of Southern society to new activity, so Grant's election will give new encouragement and moral power to those men who in a spirit of peace and justice strive to confirm the new order of things.

Thus the new Republican Administration will move quietly and steadily forward on a line clearly traced in a fixed direction; the most unruly elements of Southern society will see the uselessness of kicking against irreversible results; the fires of party passion will burn out for want of fuel; the different branches of the National Government will coöperate in harmonious action, and with a President whose mind is untouched by the acrimony and bitterness of long party feuds we may