Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/67

Rh criticized myself by thoroughgoing partisans in return. I shall always claim for myself freedom of opinion and speech in that respect. The Republican party has undoubtedly made a great many mistakes. I will not go back to the period of reconstruction and an absolved Southern policy, because that lies far behind us, and is not an issue in this campaign. Its Constitutional results have become settlements, accepted by both sides—in profession at least, and the policy of force after the admission of the late rebel States has under this Administration yielded to a scrupulous rule of Constitutional principles. Neither would I deny that, with regard to the question of the public debt at one time and to the currency question for a more extended period, there was in the Republican party an antagonism of opinions, a contest of conflicting ends. We have had Republican advocates of the payment of the public debt in greenbacks; we have had Republican inflationists, and the discussions inside of the Republican party were for some time heated and bitter. Thus for a season the party seemed to stumble along with an uncertain gait, but it has always had an unerring instinct which in the end made it turn right side up; and then it kept right side up. When in 1869 the Republican majority in Congress declared for the payment of the public debt, principal and interest, in coin, there was the end once and forever of the repudiation movement, open and disguised, in the Republican party. When in 1875 the Republican majority in Congress passed the resumption act, there was the end, once and forever, of the unredeemable paper-money business in the Republican party. Those who remained repudiationists or fiat-money men did not remain Republicans, at least not leaders of the party. They tried their luck for some time inside of it; then they left it, and became independent Greenbackers, and finally most of