Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/138

112 small spite and petty ambitions of partisanship. Set them this example in such a manner that your Southern brethren cannot fail to see, to admire and to imitate it, and you will have rendered them a service of inestimable and lasting value. As we offered to the Confederates our hands in the work of 1870, so we offer them our hands once more for the completion of that work. It is not disfranchisement from which they are to be delivered, but they are to deliver themselves from a sinister party servitude, which stifles their noblest ambition and impairs their usefulness as citizens. Whether this advice be taken kindly or not, whether it be followed by many or few, the time will come when even those who now reject it will recognize it as the counsel of a true friend who was just to them when they needed it, and who now only calls upon them to be just to themselves.

But we, at least, my fellow-citizens, conscious of serving a good cause, will go forward with unfaltering courage and determination. Let the little tricks and squirmings of partisan spite or speculation, filling with noise the air around you, not disturb your equanimity. They have not repressed the People's movement in its rise, they will not hamper it in its progress. Every blow of intrigue or malice that was aimed at it has brought to its ranks scores of honest men whom we welcome with pride. Let not one of you be deterred from taking his stand boldly according to his sense of duty by the little arrows of abuse which may be shot at him. I have now been well-nigh twenty years more or less active in public life, and so often have I seen the same men cover me with obloquy one day and with lavish praise the next, so often have I been killed stone-dead politically and risen up again fully alive, that I can speak from experience: He who walks his path with unswerving fidelity to his convictions of right has nothing to fear. Malice always dies of its own