Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/222

212 are acquired, since they are now surrounded by slave territory?”

Oh, Douglas men, what a fall is this! Did you not tell us when the Nebraska Bill was enacted, that that law was the most efficient way of introducing free labor into the Territories? Have you not most solemnly assured us every day since 1854 that the principle of popular sovereignty, as expounded by Mr. Douglas, would most certainly save all the Territories from the grasp of slavery? And now look there! Your own master and prophet admits, acknowledges, of it—that this same principle gave to slavery one and one-half degrees of latitude more than it had ever claimed, and that since the organization of the American Republic not a square foot of free territory was ever converted into slave territory, but by the same measure which you represented to us as the greatest and most reliable engine of free labor! [Cries of “Shame!”] Your own master and prophet tells you to your faces, and in the face of all mankind, and in the face of posterity, that you have been lying most atrociously—lying every day for the last six years. This was unkind—was it not, Douglasites of the North?

No; I am not joking. It was terribly unkind. All he said was most certainly, most undoubtedly, most uncontrovertibly true; but I declare, that if he had the least regard for the feelings of his friends—the least sympathy for them in their awkward embarrassments—he, he ought to have been the last man on earth to make that statement. Did he not know that you had supported him and made friends for him on the false pretence that his great principle worked the exclusion of slavery from the Territories? Did he not know that you had pledged your honor, had staked your character for truth and veracity, upon that pretence? He knew it well. He had encouraged you in doing so; and after you have compromised your-