Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/421

Rh party, as far as they refer to theories of government, have become somewhat obscure as to their identity in the Southern mind, and are correspondingly weakened as to their influence in Southern politics. Many of the older men there, indeed, still delight in an argument about a point of “strict construction,” and in quoting Jefferson's first inaugural. But to the common run of mankind in the South the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 have ceased to be known by name, and even a good many of the older men, when it comes to a practical application of their political principles, are not at all disinclined to admit considerable latitude in the exercise of the National power, if it promises them any local advantage. Indeed, it might even be said that many Southern men in these days seem inclined to favor—perhaps not in theory but certainly in practice—rather too loose than too strict a construction of the Constitutional functions of the General Government.

Moreover, there is a generation of young men growing up in the South who, when the present and prospective condition of the South is discussed at the North, are in most cases left altogether out of view. And yet, in point of fact, in a very few years an absolute majority of the voters of the South will consist of men who never saw a Confederate flag, who never in their lives saw a negro that was not a freeman, and who know of slavery only as a thing of mere historic interest, which in its day did a great deal of mischief to the country, and upon which the enlightened opinion of mankind has recorded its judgment. Whatever foolish attempts may have been made by some persons in the South immediately after the war to educate their posterity in hatred of the North and of the Union, these young men draw their ideas and aspirations entirely from the new order of things. The political battlecries of old times are to them