Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/349

Rh and cheers.] You remember the results of that period of kid-glove policy, which the South found so very gentlemanly: reverse after reverse; popular discontent rising to despondency; ruin staring us in the face. The war threatened, indeed, to become a failure; and if the resolution of the Chicago Convention, which declared the war a failure, had special reference to the period when the distinguished candidate of the Democratic party was General-in-Chief, then, it must be confessed, the Chicago Convention showed a certain degree of judgment. [Peals of laughter and cheers.)

Gradually it became clear to every candid mind that slavery, untouched, constituted the strength of the rebellion; but that slavery, touched, would constitute its weakness. The negro tilled its fields, and fed its armies; the negro carried its baggage, and dug its trenches; and the same negro was longing for the day when he would he permitted to fight for the Union, instead of being forced to work for the rebellion. To oblige him to work for the rebellion, instead of permitting him to fight for the Union, would have been more than folly—it would have been a crime against the nation. To give him his freedom, then, was an act of justice, not only to him, but to the American Republic. [Cheers.]

If the rebellious slave power had submitted, after the first six months of the war, it is possible that slavery might have had another lease of life. But its resistance being vigorous and stubborn; and not only that, its resistance being crowned with success, it became a question of life or death—the death of the nation, or the death of slavery. Then the Government chose. It chose the life of the nation by the death of slavery; and the revolution rolled over the treasonable institution, and crushed it wherever it found it. [Enthusiastic applause.]

Could an act which undermined the strength of the