Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/253

Rh forces them to lay down their arms: Now the military power of the rebellion is crushed, and the second part of the task begins, which consists in maintaining the authority so established. The despotic government prevents and suppresses the utterance of every adverse opinion; it executes or imprisons every refractory individual; it encounters by summary proceedings every hostile intention, and while establishing by a system of constant and energetic pressure a state of general and complete submission, it restores at the same time the condition of things originally existing before the rebellion broke out. It can do all this without changing its attributes in the least, for the means it uses for suppressing the rebellion, and afterward for crushing out the rebellious spirit, are in perfect consonance with the fundamental principles upon which its whole system of policy rests. It is the rule of absolute authority and force on one side, and absolute submission to this rule on the other. The same agencies which put down the rebellion, operate in maintaining the re-established authority, and all this in perfect keeping with the original nature of the whole political system.

But our case is widely different. Our system of government does not rest upon the submission of the people, but upon the free and independent co-operation of the individual. We have indeed a supreme authority, but this authority proceeds directly from the people, and works through the people. Our government may indeed suppress a rebellion by force; but, in order to restore the working of the original agencies upon which it rests, it is obliged to restore the individual to his original scope of self-action. If it attempted, after having suppressed a rebellion, to maintain its authority permanently by the same in means by which it re-established it—that is to say, by a constant and energetic pressure of force—it would