Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/199

Rh But even if they would model their conduct rather after the knights of five hundred years ago, it should not be forgotten that some of the cases on record would at no period of history have been thought to have any kind of chivalry in them. For instance, when a man, who wants to avenge a real or imaginary insult, deems the whole code of honor satisfied if he simply notifies his enemy that he will shoot him at sight, and then kills him with a shotgun from an upper-story window; or when a debtor puts a bullet into the heart of a creditor who insults him by dunning at an inopportune time.

Intelligent, generous and ambitious as the people of the South are, I should think it could not be difficult by a proper presentation of the case, coming from the most respected class among them, to awaken them to a keen appreciation of the mischief springing from such antiquated and discreditable notions of chivalry and honor.

The practice of carrying concealed weapons appears very much in the same light. That revolvers are habitually carried by a very large portion of the male population of the South is an admitted fact. Now, I ask you, in all soberness, what condition of society would you call it, in which a gentleman thinks it necessary, whenever leaving his house, to put a revolver in his pocket in anticipation of some “difficulty” with some other gentleman, which may induce or oblige him to kill the latter? This view of the matter may at first sight seem exaggerated. But is it so in fact? Ask yourself, for what purpose are deadly weapons so generally carried in the South? Not for protection against wild beasts or against highway robbers. You insist yourself that as to robbers the roads in Georgia are safer than some of the streets of New York or Chicago, and I do not deny it. And yet no gentleman here thinks it necessary to have a pistol on his body when he goes to his business place or to his club or to a ball. The few