Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/152

126 Who is there among us who but three years ago would have expected to be called upon to justify the most gross and unjustifiable usurpation of Judge Durell and the President's enforcement of it as the legitimate and lawful origin of a State government? And who of you, when permitting that to be done, would have expected to see the United States soldiery marched into the hall of a State legislature to decide its organization? Permit that to-day, and who of you can tell me what we shall be called upon, nay, what we may be forced to permit to-morrow?

You cannot but feel that we have arrived at a crisis in our affairs, and I will not conceal from you that I cannot contemplate that crisis without grave apprehension; for what has happened already makes me look forward with anxiety to what may be still in store for us. We are evidently—and I say it with calmness and deliberation—on the downward slope, and the question is, where shall we land. It is not, indeed, the success of any Napoleonic ambitions in this country that I fear, for if such ambitions existed they would still have an American and not a French people to encounter. But what I do see reason to fear if we continue on our course is this: that our time-honored Constitutional principles will be gradually obliterated by repeated abuses of power establishing themselves as precedents; that the machinery of administration may become more and more a mere instrument of “ring” rule, a tool to manufacture majorities and to organize plunder; and that finally, in the hollow shell of republican forms, this Government will become the mere foot-ball of rapacious and despotic factions. That, sir, is what I do fear.

Let us see how the drift of things has carried us on in that direction. I must confess I have long considered our policy concerning the South as one fraught with great danger, not only danger to the South but danger to the whole Republic. I have therefore opposed it step by