Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/223

Rh selves for him, day after day, in the eyes of the whole world, he turns and most unceremoniously gives you the lie. Oh, that was ungenerous! It was mean—very mean—unspeakably mean. [Applause.] If your self-sacrificing friendship had awakened the least echo in his heart, he ought to have been the last man to do so. But that heart seems to be so filled with callous selfishness, so destitute of the generous impulses of human nature, that if his friends, like Broderick, die for him, he coldly disowns them [cries of “Shame!”]; and if they lie for him, he promptly puts them to shame! Disowns them and puts them to shame! And for what? For the purpose of retrieving the lost favor of the South; of regaining the lost smiles of the slave power! And to be sacrificed to them—was that the reward you had deserved at his hands!

Look at it again. See him stand before the slaveholders in the Senate of the United States, busy bargaining away your honor for their favor. “Who has ever served you more faithfully than I with my great principle?” he asks them. “Why not let my friends in the North preach up that principle as the pioneer of freedom? The fools, perhaps, themselves believe in what they say; but we know better. Do you not see the result? Why not permit me the innocent joke of bamboozling the people of the North into believing that I am the great champion of freedom.” [Laughter.] Ah, Douglas men, what a sight is this? He has prostituted you, and now proclaims your disgrace. How do you like the attitude in which he has placed you? How do you like the pillory to which, with his own hand, he has nailed your ears?

And are you willing to stand there—stand there quietly in the eyes of mankind? Do you not sometimes hear an earnest voice speaking within you, speaking of a