Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/457

Rh ground again, and that chance seems in danger of being thrown away by acts of dishonesty or foolishness, it is time to call things by their right names.

First, as to credit: Our National credit rests upon a faithful discharge of our National obligations, and I shall show that in a great measure the individual credit and the interest of most of us rest upon the same thing. It has become the fashion of many politicians and public agitators to cry out against the bondholders, and thus to excite a prejudice against the bond, which is an embodiment of National faith. The bondholders are represented as a set of “bloated” individuals residing down East or in foreign countries, who bought their bonds at thirty-five or forty cents on the dollar and now demand one hundred cents and high interest in gold. Thus the bondholder is pictured as a sort of criminal bloodsucker, who, with cold-blooded cruelty, fattens upon the sufferings of a downtrodden people. Now, supposing our National bonds were still in the hands of those who originally bought them, can you fail to remember that when bonds were sold for forty cents on the dollar—and the quantity so sold was not large—the life of the Nation was threatened by a monstrous rebellion; that the Republic seemed to be in the agonies of death; that it appeared uncertain whether the bond bought at forty cents on Monday would be worth ten, or one cent on Saturday; and that the purchaser of the bond risked his money for the country just as much as the soldier risked his blood? Did not the American Government ask him to take that bond at almost any price when the Republic was in extremities? And now when he has helped us by taking it and giving us his money at the risk of losing it all, are we, when everything having gone well, against the predictions and expectations of many, are we as a high-minded people to turn round upon him who aided us in the hour of supreme distress, and tell