Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/122

96 of the Republican or of the Democratic party! How much error would then be dispelled! How many dangers would then be averted! You, honest Republicans, who, as sincerely as I, desire the protection of the poor negro and the suppression of violence, would then readily admit a fact which is as clear as sunlight, that the government of the Republican carpet-bagger and plunderer in the South, as a protection to the negro and the Union man, has been a most glaring and disastrous failure, and that in the very nature of things it must be so. You would no longer permit yourselves to be deceived about another fact equally clear and notorious, that in those Southern States, where the carpet-baggers and plunderers have ceased to rule—such as Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee—the poor negro is far better protected and acts of violence are far less frequent than they were when that rule still existed, and than they now are in those States where that rule still exists, as in Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama. And you would further understand that, in directly or indirectly sustaining that iniquitous rule for partisan advantage, you deprived your own party of the opportunity of carrying out beneficent and necessary reforms, and drove those States into the arms of your opponents.

On the other hand, you, honest Democrats, who have the cause of local self-government as sincerely at heart as I have, if you could but throw away the same blind partisan spirit, you would at once understand that nothing in the world can injure and imperil the cause of local self-government more than those bloody excesses and violent upheavings, apt to raise a doubt as to the fitness of the people for its exercise, and that nothing can benefit that cause more than the practical demonstration that the self-government of the people in every part of the country can, even under trying circumstances, be depended upon