Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/171

Rh crushing load of universal condemnation.” That I would say to them.

Indeed, Senators, that prediction cannot fail to become true. Do not indulge in vain delusions; do not lay the flattering unction to your souls that the cry of blood and murder or new budgets of atrocities in official reports, such as General Sheridan promises, will divert the public mind from the true question at issue. That cry and such reports begin to fall stale upon the ear of the people; not as if the people had become indifferent as to the wrongs perpetrated in any part of the country upon any class of citizens, but because the people have lost their former confidence in the sincerity and truthfulness of those who parade the bloody stories with the greatest ostentation. And why has that confidence declined? Because too many exaggerations have been discovered in the statements so frequently made, and because in many instances it became somewhat too glaringly apparent that the blood and murder cry was used as convenient partisan stage-thunder merely to catch votes. The people have begun shrewdly to suspect that when some men pretend they must remain in power to protect the lives of the negroes, the cry about murdered negroes must be raised simply to keep them in power.

But there is another and more important reason why this cry will be distrusted now. The people are asking themselves—and well they may—whether the very policy which is followed professedly to prevent such outrages is not in itself well calculated to serve as the cause for more. They look at Virginia, at North Carolina, at Georgia, and they find that the self-government of the people, unobstructed, is gradually but steadily advancing those States in peace, order, good feeling and prosperity. They look at Louisiana and find the self-government of the people obstructed and hear of turmoil and conflict. They do not fail to