Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/59

Rh compromise involved new and express Constitutional recognitions of the existence and rights of slavery, and guarantees against interference with it by Constitutional amendment or National law. The pressure from the country, even from Massachusetts, in favor of the scheme, was extraordinary, but a majority of the anti-slavery men in the Senate, in their front Mr. Sumner, stood firm, feeling that a compromise, giving express Constitutional sanction and an indefinite lease of life to slavery, would be a surrender, and knowing, also, that, even by the offer of such a surrender, secession and civil war would still be insisted on by the Southern leaders. The history of those days, as we now know it, confirms the accuracy of that judgment. The war was inevitable. Thus the anti-slavery cause escaped a useless humiliation, and retained intact its moral force for future action.

But now the time had come when the anti-slavery movement, no longer a mere opposition to the demands of the slave-power, was to proceed to positive action. The war had scarcely commenced in earnest, when Mr. Sumner urged general emancipation. Only the great ideal object of the liberty of all men could give sanction to a war in the eyes of the devotee of universal peace. To the end of stamping upon the war the character of a war of emancipation all his energies were bent. His unreserved and emphatic utterances alarmed the politicians. Our armies suffered disaster upon disaster in the field. The managing mind insisted that care must be taken, by nourishing the popular enthusiasm for the integrity of the Union,—the strictly National idea alone,—to unite all the social and political elements of the North for the struggle; and that so bold a measure as immediate emancipation might reanimate old dissensions, and put hearty coöperation in jeopardy.

But Mr. Sumner's convictions could not be repressed.