Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/132

122 of an “irrepressible conflict” are to be made responsible for its existence—these form the argumentative staple of those who possess either not sagacity enough to discern or not courage enough to state facts as they are.

In investigating the causes of the great struggle which has for years kept the minds of the people in constant uneasiness and excitement, I shall endeavor to act with the most perfect fairness. I will not indulge in any denunciations. I shall impeach the motives of no one. I shall not appeal to prejudice or passion. I invite you to pass in review the actual state of things with calmness and impartiality.

It is one of the best traits of human nature, that we form our first opinions on matters of general interest from our innate sense of right and wrong. Our moral impressions, the dictates of our consciences, the generous impulses of our hearts, are the sources from which our first convictions spring. But custom, material interest, and our natural inclination to acquiesce in that which is, whether right or wrong, that vis inertiæ which has brought so much suffering upon humanity, are apt to overrule the native instincts of our moral nature. They are “sicklied over by the pale cast” of calculation; the freshness of their impelling power is lost, and questions essentially moral are imperceptibly changed into questions of material interest, national economy, or political power.

The people of the South have evidently gone through that process in regard to the institution of slavery; they have become accustomed to identify its existence with the existence of Southern society, while even a large majority of the people of the North were rather inclined to silence their moral objections to it, and to acquiesce, until its immediate interference with matters of general interest gave a new impulse to their native antipathy. Although I am not ashamed to confess that the moral