Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/80

60 ones press into the foreground and give a powerful impulse to the popular mind. Neither can new issues be manufactured to order; they also spring and grow out of the existing condition of things. In one respect, however, the circumstances surrounding us seem to favor a change of party relations.

That the Republican party has virtually accomplished those things which lay in the line of its original policy, and that the Democratic party has had to change its policy with regard to the most essential points in controversy several times within the last ten years, and now exists merely as an opposition party, are things which are every day asserted and every day denied. There is, however, an impression growing on the popular mind that it actually is so; and there is some reason for that impression.

The Republican party fought against slavery and that sort of State sovereignty which formed the protection of slavery, and they have disappeared. The Democratic party fought for these things, and they cannot be restored. The fight for and against them is therefore ended and become obsolete. Thus the great issues which originally formed the line of division exist no longer. Attempts to artificially revive them will not avail much longer. On one side efforts may be made to unsettle the positive results which have grown out of this struggle. These efforts may produce grievous disturbance and confusion for a time, but in the end they will prove powerless against the fixed determination of the popular mind to uphold the new order of things. Such efforts may for a moment strengthen, and justly strengthen, the idea on the other side that much is still to be done to protect accomplished results, and that to this end the continuance of the old organization is necessary; but it will also turn out to be true that the task of protecting those results will in many