Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/13

Rh time, final solution. All other political questions were at once found to be merged in this, and the people availed themselves of the first opportunity to decree a sweeping reform, destined to harmonize their social and political organization with the advanced state of their moral and intellectual enlightenment. It remains only for the representatives of the people to put this decree into a Constitutionally binding form, and for the General Government to enforce it with the strong arm of power. There are, it is true, influences which exert themselves to defeat this result even in the last stage of its final consummation; but their strength is growing less every day, and even the interposition of great accidents, such as are beyond the reach of human foresight, has become altogether improbable. According to all reasonable calculations, we may consider the great object of the revolutionary movement, the extinction of slavery throughout this Union, undivided and indivisible, as virtually insured.

I call it a revolutionary movement, not for the reason that the slave power rose in rebellion against the legitimate government of the Republic; for this was only a rebellion, while the true revolutionary movement was directed against the predominance of the slave power; nor for the reason that the rebellion produced contingencies unforeseen in the Constitution of the country; that the necessity of defending the integrity of the Republic against the people of a large number of States composing and constituting it, placed us, if I may use the expression, into an extra-constitutional condition; and that, in order to save the Republic, we had to fall back upon those general principles, according to which a government must