Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/305

Rh If it recognizes the independence of the Southern Confederacy, we shall soon have on our hands the complicated and endless wars, which, in the very nature of things, must grow out of disunion.

If the Government, after a cessation of hostilities, resumes the present war for the Union, we shall labor under difficulties immensely greater than at present, for three reasons:

1st. From a cessation of hostilities, such as proposed, the rebels will derive such advantages, and we such disadvantages, that the struggle will be almost hopeless; and still, as peace is impossible with disunion, it will be as necessary as ever.

2d. By declaring before the whole world that the war is a failure; by demanding its cessation on the score of justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare; by thus declaring the rebels in the right, and our Government in the wrong; and by thus condemning and virtually abandoning the war for the Union, they invite foreign powers to recognize the rebel Confederacy, and to throw their whole influence against an unjust, inhuman, tyrannical, and universally ruinous war.

3d. By making the foregoing declarations, they turn public opinion in foreign countries against us, and discourage the movements now going on to give us financial aid; and all this while it is certain—and they make it more so—that the war must either be continued after a useless cessation, or be resumed at a more or less distant period.

And, finally, by implicitly advocating a policy of concession to armed rebellion, they propose to set aside the fundamental obligation of submission to the Constitutional will of the majority, to remove the only guarantee of order in democratic life, to pay a premium to revolt,