Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/288

278 leading men even to consider the proposition of a Convention or other peaceable means looking to the restoration of peace on the basis of reunion? Is it true or not, that public sentiment in rebeldom, as far as we have means of knowing it, may be fairly summed up in what one of their newspapers said, that, if we presented to them a white sheet of paper with the signatures of our authorities at the bottom of it, on which they, the rebels, might write their own conditions of reunion, they would scorn to accept it? Do we not hear this repeated daily in numberless variations? Did they not ridicule and vilify in the most contemptuous manner certain Northern Democrats who pretended that they could negotiate a reunion on the basis of a compromise?

But this is not the only test of the matter. The rebels know full well that any offer of terms on their part, nay, the mere indication in the press of a willingness on their part to come back, would materially contribute to increase and inflame the divisions now existing among us; they know that a half-way offer of a compromise would be a good stroke of policy for them; and now, did you ever hear any one of their public men who could speak with anything like authority, admit even the idea that such a thing was possible? Why, even the celebrated peace-adventurers at Niagara Falls, who certainly meant mischief and nothing but mischief, said in their final winding-up letter that they had not the remotest intention of entertaining any proposition looking to reunion. And they and their friends in the North might certainly have made capital out of such a thing. And even Mr. Benjamin, in his late dispatch to Mr. Mason, while evidently laboring to give his Northern friends as much comfort as possible, could not refrain from stating most emphatically that the recognition of the independence of the Confederacy was a condition sine quâ non for all peace nego-