Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/232



This address was delivered in the regular course of the Fraternity Lectures. A few days before its delivery a meeting of Abolitionists was broken up in Boston by an excited crowd, among whom, as the papers stated, several of the “respectable conservative citizens and business men of Boston” were conspicuous. The secession movement in the Southern States had assumed formidable proportions, and great apprehensions were entertained by commercial men and manufacturers, who had large pecuniary interests at stake in the insurgent States. Their fears and excitement were increased by every demonstration in the North which might have a tendency to “irritate the South.” The same cause produced similar disturbances in other Northern cities, until at last the great national uprising after the attack on Fort Sumter put an end to such proceedings.



A few days ago, when on my travels in the State of New York, I was reading newspapers in a railroad car, my eyes lighted upon a column headed in large letters: “The mouth of Abolitionism shut! The Blacks smoked out!” &c., and then followed a glowing account of the ardor and enthusiasm displayed by the intelligent and conservative citizens of Boston in breaking up a meeting of Abolitionists. At first I thought there must be some mistake; it must be an old paper, or an article copied from an old paper; or it must be a typographical error, substituting Boston for Baltimore, or Louisville, or some