Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/172

146 conclude that the forcing of Bullock and Foster Blodgett upon Georgia would have reduced that State to the same unhappy condition which in Louisiana the usurpation of Kellogg had brought forth. Looking, then, at that picture and at this, they begin wisely to make up their minds to the fact that after all the Southern States can now give to themselves better government than Federal interference can impose upon them.

But, still more, the people have begun to understand, and it is indeed high time they should understand, that the means professedly used to prevent and suppress outrages are producing far worse fruit than the outrages themselves; that—and hear what I say—the lawlessness of power is becoming far more dangerous to all than the lawlessness of the mob. Therefore, I think Senators most seriously deceive themselves if they think the blood and murder cry can deceive the people about the nature of the usurpations of power we have now to deal with.

Neither do I think that you can convince an intelligent public opinion that the Kellogg party did carry the State of Louisiana by a bona fide vote at the last election, and that the unconstitutional employment of the Federal bayonets was merely to vindicate the true will of the people of Louisiana lawfully expressed at the polls. No intelligent man can have escaped the impression that those who executed the barefaced usurpation of 1872 would not shrink from any device, ever so foul, to preserve the fruits of that usurpation by repeating the game in 1874. It was noticed with general astonishment (and I have to refer to that case once more, for it stands out as one of the most repulsive things in the history of our politics) that a Federal officer, United States Marshal Packard, was permitted to manage the political campaign as the chairman of the Kellogg State central committee and at the same time the operations of United States soldiers in arresting his