Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/82

56 the Southern States in their misfortunes. Indignantly he declared, that

second only to the wide-spread devastations of war were the robberies to which those States had been subjected, under an Administration calling itself Republican, and with local governments deriving their animating impulse from the party in power; and that the people in these communities would have been less than men, if, sinking under the intolerable burden, they did not turn for help to a new party, promising honesty and reform. He recalled the reiterated expression he had given to his sentiments, ever since the breaking out of the war; and closed the recital with these words:

Such is the simple and harmonious record, showing how from the beginning I was devoted to peace, how constantly I longed for reconciliation; how, with every measure of equal rights, this longing found utterance; how it became an essential part of my life; how I discarded all idea of vengeance and punishment; how reconstruction was, to my mind, a transition period, and how earnestly I looked forward to the day when, after the recognition of equal rights, the Republic should again be one in reality as in name. If there are any who ever maintained a policy of hate, I never was so minded; and now in protesting against any such policy, I act only in obedience to the irresistible promptings of my soul.

And well might he speak thus. Let the people of the South hear what I say. They were wont to see in him only the implacable assailant of that peculiar institution, which was so closely interwoven with all their traditions and habits of life, that they regarded it as the very basis of their social and moral existence, as the source of their prosperity and greatness; the unsparing enemy of the rebellion, whose success was to realize the fondest dreams of their ambition; the never-resting advocate of the grant