Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/276

266 that we must sacrifice to it our peace, our prosperity, our blood, our future, our honor! What an insatiable vampire is this that drinks out the very marrow of our manliness! [“Shame.”] Pardon me; this sounds like a dark dream, like the offspring of a hypochondric imagination, and yet—have I been unjust in what I have said? [“No.”]

Is it asking too much of you that you shall secure by vigorous measures against future dangers all that is most dear to you? Or is it not true that such measures would not be opposed had they not the smell of principle about them? [“That's it.” Applause.] Or do the measures proposed really offend your Constitutional conscience? Or are they impolitic? What policy can be better than that which secures peace and liberty to the people? Or are they inhuman? I have heard it said that a measure touching Slavery might disturb the tranquillity and endanger the fortunes of many innocent people in the South. This is a possibility which I sincerely deplore. But many of us will remember how often they were told it in former years, that true philanthropy begins at home. Disturb the tranquillity and endanger the fortunes of innocent people in the South!—and there your tenderness stops? Are the six hundred thousand loyal men of the North, who have offered their lives, and all they have and they are, for the Union, less innocent? Are those who have soaked the soil of Virginia, and Missouri, and Kentucky, and Tennessee with their blood—are they guilty? Are the tears of Northern widows and children for their dead husbands and fathers less warm and precious than the tears of a planter's lady about the threatened loss of her human chattels? [Sensation.] If you have such tender feelings about the dangers and troubles of others, how great must be the estimation you place upon the losses and sufferings of our people! Streams of blood, and a stream of tears for every drop of blood; the happiness of so many thousand families