Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/72

52 And now, sir, why was all this done? “Because you designed to disrupt the Republican party in Missouri,” as our accusers say. Well, sir, my allegiance is to the Republican cause. In the principles embodied in that cause I believe. To the advocacy of those principles I have faithfully devoted the best years and efforts of my manhood. And I do not hesitate to declare that to me that cause stands above the party. When the party or any subdivision of it becomes faithless to that cause, and I have to choose between fidelity to it and fidelity to the organization, then my allegiance belongs to the cause still. And it was that allegiance which directed every one of my steps. Show me in our platform a single resolution that is not a faithful reassertion of the best principles we as Republicans have been fighting for; show me a single point in which any of the great results of the war is given up, in which a single iota of the true Republican creed is compromised. You will search in vain. Point out to me a single one of the candidates we nominated who was not thoroughly identified with the Republican cause. You can find none.

“But you did break the Republican organization of Missouri in two,” our accusers say. So we did. When a portion of the Republican organization became faithless to a vital point of the Republican platform, and when the Republican cause was endangered by the wire-pullers and spoilsmen of the party, it was better to break the organization in two than to permit the whole to be covered with common disgrace and to be reduced to common impotency. In this way we saved the moral power of the Republican cause for the future.

“But you asked for Democratic votes,” we are told. So we did. I always did. During fifteen years of work for the Republican cause I scarcely ever made a speech but for the distinct purpose of obtaining Democratic