Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/156

130 at once have made every Southern State a perfect model of peace and order. I know it would not; but it is my solemn conviction that it would have been infinitely more productive of good, it would have been infinitely more effective in gradually developing a satisfactory state of things than all your force laws, all the efforts of Government officers to maintain their party ascendancy, all the usurpations and military interferences in the same direction. And above all things, such a policy would have left those principles intact which are the life of Constitutional government. It would have spared us such a painful spectacle as that which we are to-day beholding in Louisiana. It would have relieved the American people of the anxious inquiry you hear on all sides to day, “What is now to become of the character of our republican Government.” It was the policy naturally suggested by the teachings of our institutions; it was the true republican, American policy.

But there presented itself to you also another method of dealing with the violent and disorderly tendencies in the South. It was, whenever and wherever a disturbance occurred, to use at once brute force in sufficient strength to repress it; to employ every means to keep in every State your partisans in place, and to trample down all opposition, no matter what stretch of power it might require, no matter what Constitutional restriction of authority might have to be broken through. Such a method, if supported by a military force sufficiently strong, may also be made quite effective, for a time at least. Thus you might have brought every malefactor in the South to swift justice. Wherever three of your opponents met, you might have styled them an unlawful combination of banditti, and had the offenders promptly punished. You might have maintained in governmental power in the South whomsoever of your party you liked. You might have made every